


Beside the Point

by nooziewoozie



Category: Rurouni Kenshin
Genre: F/M, Humor, Romance
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2011-07-14
Updated: 2012-11-21
Packaged: 2017-10-23 19:31:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 21,836
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/254050
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nooziewoozie/pseuds/nooziewoozie
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"I'll do it, so long as no one walks away with recorded evidence. I don't need this getting me fired if pictures end up on facebook, or worse—" she levels a glare at Misao—"on Okina's hard drive." -Kenshin, Kaoru, and wayward strippers.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

"Let me get this straight," Kaoru says, rubbing the bridge of her nose with her thumb and forefinger. "You want me— _me_ , Kaoru Kamiya—to dress up as a stripper, get stuffed in a cake, and ride in an unheated truck to Shura and Sayo's bridal shower?"

"Don't be ridiculous," Megumi says. "The truck will be heated."

"That's not the point!" Kaoru snaps, and takes a fortifying gulp of her white chocolate mocha frap. "Has it occurred to you, maybe, that I'm _not_ a stripper?"

"Of course you're not, Kaoru," Tae puts in as she slips into the booth. "It's all going to be in good fun."

Kaoru shakes her head. "I'm not doing this, guys. No way."

"C'mon, Kaoru," Misao wheedles. "We'll have a blast."

"Please. _You'll_ have a blast, while _I_ get covered in frosting while wearing nipple pasties!"

"Don't be ridiculous," Megumi says again, sipping a caramel macchiato with the air of an urbane professional. "No one ever said you had to wear nipple pasties."

"I don't even know why I bother talking to you people," Kaoru says sourly in response to Megumi's grin. "Why don't we pool our money and hire a _real_ stripper?"

"Because Sayo would never approve. You know how she feels about that, and it _is_ her party," Tae says, the very picture of reason.

"So why bother having a stripper at all? No matter how you try to spin it, this doesn't make any sense."

" _Because_ , Kaoru," Misao says, rolling her eyes, "Sayo and Shura are getting married and we're throwing a bachelorette party, and you can't have one of those without strippers, and since Sayo disapproves of monetizing female bodies and reducing women to the sum of their anatomical parts, we can't _hire_ a stripper, but it'll be fun if one of us gets dressed up as one. You know. To keep the occasion festive."

Kaoru resists the urge to slap her forehead, but it's a close thing. "Then _you_ do it."

"Can't," Misao says cheerfully. "I'm decorating the place. I'm needed beforehand. And Okon and Omasu are helping me after work, so they're out."

"Then, you," Kaoru says to Megumi.

"Can't," the doctor says, smiling. "I'm on ER call until about an hour after the party starts, so I'll be late."

"Tae?" Kaoru asks, knowing already that resistance is futile.

"I can't either, Kaoru," Tae says, and while her expression is sympathetic, her eyes are dancing with suppressed laughter. "I'm catering the shindig, and Sae isn't going to be back from France for a while, so she can't, either."

"I still don't get why we have to do this at all," Kaoru says sourly, but, realizing that her so-called friends would never let the matter die, decides to give in with grace. "And I'll probably live to regret this, but I'll do it, so long as no one walks away with recorded evidence. I don't need this getting me fired if pictures end up on facebook, or worse—" she levels a glare at Misao—"on Okina's hardrive."

"They wont, I promise," Misao says. "And he really is a sweetie. He doesn't perv on you, uh, as much since you did that thing to his beard. How _did_ you manage that, anyway?"

"Trade secret. And I'm not denying it," Kaoru says. "He's adorable, but his porn collection extends into the terabytes."

Misao concedes the point by sucking on her smoothie.

"Anyway," Kaoru says, addressing the table at large, the occupants of which are now smiling brightly at the prospect of her popping out a cake, "my services do not come free. There are _conditions_. One—" she holds up a finger—"there will be no photos or videos takes during the popping."

"Done," Misao promises. "I'll confiscate cell phones myself."

Kaoru nods. "Two. I will not dress up as anything ridiculous. No maids, no pirates, no gypsies, no sex-kitten nurses—"

"Got it," Megumi says, rapidly flipping through pages on her iPhone. "We'll find you something perfect. You and I have to go shopping for your clothes anyway. Next weekend?"

Kaoru nods. Lord only knew what Megumi would try to fit her in if Kaoru didn't go along to exercise her veto-power. "Sure. And three," Kaoru says, "There will be no frosting involved. Not one me, not on the cake, not on _anything_."

"Of course," Tae nods. "They're usually made out of cardboard, but I'll put in the order personally, just to make sure."

"Well then," Kaoru grumbles, and sucks on her frap some more.

* * *

The day of the party finds Kaoru staring dubiously at the three-foot-tall cardboard box her so-called friends plan on sticking her in. It's festive enough, she supposes, with adorable bits of fruit stenciled on the sides, even if the strawberries looked a bit anemic, and a bright red trim. It was almost cute, but she is going to have to stuff herself in there and get delivered to a party by a delivery service that apparently specialized in this sort of thing, so all she really wanted to do was kick it.

"Tae," she says into the phone, "are you sure about this?"

"Is it too small?" Tae's voice crackles over the connection. "They told me that most adults could fit in it."

"I fit," Kaoru says, but aside from general unease and the acute sense that the evening was sure to be the most embarrassing of her life, she can't find a good reason to back out. "I'm just not sure about this."

"It'll be fun, Kaoru. Legendary. The Night Koaru Kamiya Popped Out of a Pastry. Hey, that'd be great title for a romantic comedy."

"I'd pay money to see that," Kaoru agrees, "but not if I'm the one doing the popping. Did you _see_ what Megumi convinced me to buy?"

"Yes, she texted me a picture of you wearing it. You look great." Tae laughed. "Well, your ass my not be covered all the way, but you _do_ look good in it. Oh, hey, I've got to go, the boob cake's almost done."

"What cake _now_?"

"You'll see!" Tae laughs and hangs up.

Kaoru chews on her bottom lip some more, and then decides that she's had enough of feeling wishy-washy about this cake business. She'll dress in that scrap of fabric some trick in the dressing room mirror had enticed her into buying, and she'd sit in that cake, and she'd pop out of it with _finesse_ , damn it, even if it kills her.

She stomps off to shower. She may not have Megumi's cool, sophisticated beauty, nor Tae's classic bone structure, nor Misao's delicate, impish features, but she is fierce. _Fierce_ , Kaoru reminds herself. She may not be gorgeous, but if she had managed to become a national kendo champion by eighteen, she could do this.

She could do this _easy_.

* * *

Kenshin, meanwhile, is scowling at the phone. "Sir, tell me you didn't."

"Of course I did," Hiko responds imperiously. "It's New Year's Eve. I knew you'd be alone in that little rat hole of an apartment. Don't you tell me I don't care about you after this."

Kenshin thinks back over the years of borderline child abuse to which he'd been subjected in the name of building strength of body and spirit and snorts. "I never said that. Sir. But this is completely unnecessary. And it's not a rat hole."

"Of course its necessary," Hiko answers, cool as cucumber and arrogant as Faustus, except without the terrible downfall and eternal servitude to the Devil attached. "You haven't had a steady relationship since that Yukishiro girl. It really is time to move on with your life."

"So you decide to send me a stripper?" Kenshin grinds out and pulls his word-a-day calendar towards him. What do you know, it really is nearly ten tears to the day. Five years ago, he would have been drowning in his own sorrows; this year, he only set about plowing through his paperwork. "You couldn't send me a bottle of sake or something, you know, _reasonable_ to commiserate?"

Hiko snorts, and Kenshin notes that when Hiko snorts, it's imperious. Of course it is. "You can't even _taste_ sake, moron. You say it tastes like chalk to you."

"That's besides the point."

"No, it's not. I'm not wasting fine sake on a brat who can't even enjoy it."

"And what makes you think I'll enjoy this stripper's services?"

"Did you turn gay while I wasn't looking?"

"That's not the point either!"

"Have you decided to become a monk, then?"

Kenshin sighs through his teeth. As thankful as he is to Hiko for rescuing him out of truly horrific conditions early in life, he _isn't_ grateful for the fact that Hiko has decided that kicking Kenshin's ass throughout the remainder of it is his due.

"You live like one, so you could have fooled me. Then again, you _could_ be gay. I wouldn't know, what with that hair of yours," Hiko continues.

"Your hair is longer than mine," Kenshin says testily. _Damn it,_ he thinks. Twenty-eight years old, and ten years since he'd lived with Hiko, but even the shortest conversation is capable of reducing him to a snarling teenager.

"Besides the point."

"I'm hanging up now. Sir."

"Listen, idiot." Hiko's voice loses its nonchalance and he pauses. Kenshin listens despite himself. "It's been ten years now. She's dead. Gone."

For a second, Kenshin doesn't know what to say. He knows that the years have stretched long and alone since Tomoe's death, but to hear it makes them seem interminably longer. Then: "I know, sir."

"Then you need to pull your head out of your ass and get over it." Hiko's words are curt and sharp, and all the more powerful for being true.

"I know, sir," he repeats. The pain is not so bad. He doesn't want to hurl the phone out the window in anguish, nor is the urge to drink himself into a stupor loud and overwhelming. He hears what Hiko is saying, because Hiko is an expert at not saying things— _get up, get out, stop hiding behind your work, you idiot, because her spirit cannot possibly be happy to see you like this._

He's known that for years now.

"Think of this as a twelve-step program," Hiko says. "Don't waste the opportunity, idiot."

The click is loud in Kenshin's ear. He sighs and shakes the cobwebs from his mind. "With all due respect, sir, I think you need that more than me," he mutters into the phone and tosses it onto his desk.

 _A stripper_ , he muses, _of all things, a stripper_. He sighs and rubs his forehead. He'd thank the girl for the thought and her time, send her home, and get back to work. _It may be time to move on_ , he thinks, as he looks over documents relevant to the Tsukayama deposition; Tomoe is a shadow of the woman she had once been in his life, and while he has known that for a while now, he's allowed himself to stagnate. This is the life he had been given, when she had lost hers, and he needs to live it.

But he wouldn't start it with a stripper, he thinks, making a note on the document on his desk. While he had nothing against people making money any way they chose so long as it was legal, he preferres _not_ to have to pay for a woman's attention, even if the thought of asking a woman out and making—Heaven forbid—small talk across a dinner table makes him break out in hives.

He continues making notes—Mr. Tsukayama faltered here, embellished here, probably because he acquired his collection of antique Japanese weaponry in less than legal ways, so he'd have to schedule yet _another_ deposition, and probably sit in on it just to make sure all was in order before the initial hearing next month—when he hears a loud knock on his door.

He sighs. Time to get rid of the stripper.

Instead of some scantily clad woman, though, he comes face-to-face with a very, very large cake, decorated in what seems to be bright red tinsel and pale strawberries, and a burly deliveryman who shoves a clipboard in his face.

Kenshin swallows a groan and feels a headache start worming its way between his eyes. He signs it anyway and longs for a stiff drink. What the hell, maybe he'd even offer the stripper one.

* * *

Kaoru curses her infernal dress for the _n_ th time, and tries to tug it down her thighs. It's ridden up horribly, and Kaoru is sure that half of her bottom is going to be on display to God, the Universe, and various inebriated party guests when she pops out.

She hears a knock, and the slightly muffled voice of the deliveryman as he wheels the cake in, the slight bumps as she passes over a threshold. She squints at her watch—it's so dark in here, she can't see—and tries to estimate. She's supposed to emerge exactly five minutes after she's been set down.

As the seconds tick by, Kaoru wonders—where is the squealing, the laughter, the popping of Champaign bottles? This is the quietest bachelorette party she's ever been party to, and once again tugs on her dress.

Someone clears a throat, and there's a discreet knock on the smallest tier, somewhere to the right of her head. Change of plans? Well, it's now or never, and Kaoru screws up her courage, hitches a smile on her face, hopes to God that Misao did manage to confiscate cell phones and surges upward. Her head tears through the tissue cover of the cake easily enough.

"Surprise!" she shouts and she pops out, but instead of a room full of her friends in various stages of sugar inhalation and numerous other intoxications, she comes face-to-face with a smallish man with red hair.

He blinks.

She blinks.

And then thinks, _I'm going to kill all of them!_ before clapping her hands on her face and sinking back down into the cake.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In which questions are answered. Also, I'm a bit stuck about where this should go after this chapter. Shall they have a meal? Should I have them watch a movie? Watch TLC? Start an improv comedy troupe? I have no earthly idea. Why don't you all tell me instead?

_Well_ , Kenshin thinks after the stripper disappears back into her cake,  _that was unexpected._

He waits for a few seconds, and when it's apparent that the lady would not be making a reappearance to seduce him and/or explain her behavior, he knocks on the cake again and clears his throat. "Excuse me."

There's no response besides a barely audible whimper and a wobble, he clears his throat again and leans forward to peer into the cake. He spies a dark-haired woman in some sort of black dress and also in great distress. "I'm not—ah, I'm not going to hurt you. If you would just climb out of your—" he touches her container with a finger, and realizes that calling it a box could possibly be considered quite rude—"cake, we could—"

She raises her eyes to meet his, and he notes that they are a fierce and vivid blue. She shoots up from her crouched position and glares at him, a rather lethally sharp shoe raised to her shoulder, and her delicate chin set at an absurdly cute mulish angle. "I'm not a stripper!" she declares vehemently. "They—my friends—it was joke, there was a party—I'm a teacher! Elementary school, I've just been licensed, and you can look me up online! I'm not here to—to—I'm  _not_  going to take my clothes off, okay?" Her cheeks are flushed a bright pink, and her eyes are sparking with a bright, threatening light, to say nothing of a black strappy contraption pointed straight at his head.

 _Oh_ , he thinks idly, that's _why they're called stilettos_.

She holds up the impromptu weapon with an assured grip, as though she knows how to do quick and grievous violence with it. He wonders, vaguely, if she knows how magnificent rage looks on her, but he shakes away that thought and concentrates on more urgent concerns. "By all means, please, keep your clothes on," he says as mildly as he can manage, considering the circumstances.  _Nerves_ , he thinks, but he's not going to report her. She can take care of her troubles with her employer herself. "But I'd like you to climb out of that, uh, cake."

She opens her mouth to make an angry response, but snaps it shut as he watches his words sink in. "You—you  _don't_  want me to strip for you?" she asks suspiciously, narrowing her eyes at him. "Because I'm  _not_ going to." She gives the shoe a little shake. "And I can  _savage_  you with this, so don't try anything!"

He shakes his head and offers her a hand. "I'd be terribly pleased if all of our clothes stayed exactly where they are, if that's all right with you." He doesn't add that, while she holds herself like a trained martial artist, he could probably have her disarmed in less time than it would take for her to twitch a muscle in his direction. He doesn't brag about it, as a rule, and he makes a mental note to keep an eye on her—and her rather lethally beady shoes— regardless because he hasn't made it as far as he has by being a  _total_  moron.

She glares at him some more, then carefully takes his hand. Climbing out of the cake takes come maneuvering, but she makes it out and he finally gets a proper look at her, and his mouth promptly runs dry. She is stunning in an intense, vital sort of way—delicately muscled and lean. Her dress—can that even be called a dress?—ends well above her knees, asymmetrically cut and had a scrap of fabric hanging off one slim hip. And sequins. So many sequins. He wonders if he ought to fetch a pair of sunglasses.

He clears his throat and forcibly drags his eyes up to her face before she notices that he is ogling her. She shifts, from foot to foot, and tugs at the hem of her dress. Of course, he thinks, and feels blood rush to his own face, with a dress that short, her backside must barely be covered. Well.

"Would you like me to call you a cab?" he says.

"Actually, could I call a friend?" she asks.

He shrugs, and gestures to the cordless phone sitting on a side-table. "Area code is 312," he informs her, and he wanders back to his desk to shuffle some papers around. He watches her out of the corner of his eye as she dials and waits for an answer.

He tries valiantly not to ogle the stripper's backside—which, thankfully,  _is_  covered by her dress, but only just barely—and mostly succeeds while she has an urgent conversation.

* * *

"Megumi!" Kaoru whispers into the phone. "Pick up, pick up _, pick up_!" It doesn't  _seem_  like she'll end up dead in a strange man's basement, and the man who occupies the far side of the room  _seems_ mild and descent and—truth be told—rather pretty, but she would really rather not stick around to test any of those hypotheses. Not without a large stick and a can of pepper spray, anyway, because while she wouldn't balk at sticking him with her heels of push came to shove, they're an expensive pair.

Finally, Megumi answers, sounding harried. "Who is this?"

"Megumi!" Kaoru gasps into the phone. "You have to come get me—"

"Where are you?" Megumi shrieks into her ear, and Kaoru jerks the phone away for a second before resuming the conversation. "Are you safe? We're going to come get you, there's been some sort of switch-up—"

"I'm fine. Before you continue with that, let it be known that I'm never going to forgive you _. Any_  one of you."

There is a short pause as Megumi processes that this is no idle threat, but she smoothly continues, her voice only a little hollow, "Where are you? Misao, write this down for me—talk. Address?"

"Just a second," Kaoru says, and reluctantly turns around to face the horny man who'd ordered a stripper into his home. "Can I have your address, please?"

He looks up from a document he'd been perusing and peers at her over the top of his glasses, and rattles it off.

Kaoru turns back around and repeats the address to Megumi, who, instead of saying, "We'll be right there," and snapping the phone shut, says, "Why on earth are you at  _Kenshin's_  place?"

"You  _know_  this guy?" Kaoru's stomach simultaneously does the rumba and jumps from her midsection to her knees.

"Yes, yes, he's—he's one of Sano's old friends. Did he order the  _real_  stripper?  _Kenshin_? That doesn't sound like him at all." Megumi sounds mystified.

"He did," Kaoru confirms quickly and repressively. "Now will you please hurry over and  _get me_?"  _Shit, shit, shit,_ Kaoru thinks.  _Now someone in the outside world knows, and now Sano gonna figure it out and tease me for all eternity._   _How much more awkward could this get?_

"In a minute," Megumi says. "Put him on the line for me, will you?"

"I'd really rather no one knew about this, and that I know you and you know—well—just come get me!"

"Put him  _on_ , Kaoru," Megumi says. "I can always call his cell phone."

"Fine," Kaoru cringes, and turns around to face Kenshin again. She fixes a bright smile on her face. "Uh, it seems we have some mutual acquaintances," she says to him. She crosses the floor and holds out the phone. "One of them would like to talk. Um. To you."

He glances at her face quizzically and takes the phone. "Hello?" he asks, and immediately his expression brightens. "Oh, Megumi! How are you? Me? Fine. Good, good." He listens, and then swings his chair around so that only a tuft of his hair is visible over the top. "Busy? No, not especially." Pause. "The stripper? The  _real_  stripper? I'm not sure what you mean—oh." Another pause, longer this time. A chuckle. "No, actually, that was someone else's doing. I think he wanted to give me a present." A laugh. "It  _is_  something Sano would do, but thank God, it hasn't crossed his mind. Yet, anyway." Pause. "Yeah, it would have taken you that long. There've been accidents all along 294 and 1-55. 355 might work, but then everything's covered in a foot of snow anyway. How long do I think—oh, let's see, a couple hours, maybe even three, especially if you're all the way in Naperville." The longest pause yet. "I'm not—well—I wouldn't mind. No, of course it's not an imposition. But you should ask her anyway. Yes. Yes. Dinner sounds good. When does Sano get back from Beijing? Yeah, we'll do it after. Sounds good. Okay, take care now. Have fun."

Kaoru listens as she peers around the apartment. It's tidy and neat, and decorated in shades of brown and blue and sage green. Half the living area is an office and shelves full of books line two of the four walls. In one corner, there is a mounted pair of swords— _daisho_ —and she warms to the man despite his unfortunate proclivities for securing female company; the swords are antiques and obviously cared for. She would love to curl up on one of the overstuffed leather sofas and read, but the situation is awkward yet. Chances are excellent now that the little man—Kenshin—wouldn't be able to stuff her in a body bag were he so inclined, but in light of more recent developments, it seems like cold comfort.

He swings his chair around and smiles at her. "Megumi would like to speak to you."

"Thanks," she says, and most of her hostility disappears as he diligently refocuses on the piles of paper spread out before him.

"Yeah?" she says.

"Here's the deal," Magumi says. "If I were to come and get you, it would take me a couple hours."

" _What_?"

"I was in the neighborhood earlier today. You're actually right near where I work."

Kaoru sighs. "Right, you told me. Construction and accidents."

"So I've asked Kenshin if he wouldn't mind hosting you for the night—'

"Megumi, you had no right to do that! I'll call a cab."

"Don't bother. It would take just as long to get home, and the roads are dangerous, and I doubt a cab would come get you—it'd have to take 47th Street and you know how risky that is. Just stay until tomorrow morning and one of us will come get you."

"Megumi, I can't just stay at the man's place, I don't even know him!"

"You'll be fine. Kenshin is wonderful. You'll love him, I promise. We'll save you some cake."

"That's not something—"

 _Click_. The line goes dead. Kaoru furiously redials and gets Megumi's voice mail. She tries again, and when Megumi's voice tells her to leave a message, she resists the urge to hurl the phone out the window. She takes a deep breath, and turns to face the man—Kenshin—again.

"I hate to ask this of you," Kaoru begins, "but it seems that I'll be here a couple hours until a cab can come get me. Would it be all right if I camped out on your couch?"

He frowns. "It'll take a while for a cab to get here, and it's not very safe that late. Are you sure you don't want to camp out until morning? I'm fine with it."

She shakes her head. "No, I'd like to go home. Not that your hospitality isn't appreciated, of course." And she tugs on the hem of her dress because the damn thing is too short and she never wears this sort of thing in public and she can't bend over for fear that something would rip, or worse, ride up.

He holds up his hands and says, "Up to you, of course. Uh, would you like something else to wear in the meantime? You look like you're, um, cold."

She snaps a look at him.

He shrugs and turns slightly pink, which clashes terribly with his hair but is disarmingly cute. He's the consummate professional, it seems, getting work done even with a would-be stripper prowling about, but the blush makes him seem so much younger than his demeanor would suggest, she wants to giggle.

"I'd really like that," she says, "Sweats would be nice, if you've got them."

"Of course," he says, and moves around her to a doorway tucked in a corner. He moves lithely, with grace that is elegantly minimalist.  _He could be a dancer_ , she thinks,  _or a martial artist, or even a model, with that face._ She frowns as she thinks of it—no, he couldn't model. He is too short, for one thing, and he has a large cross-shaped scar on his left cheek. She wonders about the story behind  _that_  one.

He reemerges from the room and holds out a pile of folded clothes. "Old, I'm afraid, but they're clean. The bedroom is right through here, and please do take advantage of the attached bathroom. It's all yours."

He settles himself at his desk again, perches his glasses on his nose, and gets back to work. Kaoru looks at him for a moment, with sweats grown old and buttery soft with care in her hands, and feels an overwhelming wave of tenderness crash over her.

He could have been cruel and dirty and leered at her.

But instead he burrows down into his paperwork and purses his mouth and peers through his glasses with the funniest wrinkle between his eyebrows, and at that moment, something gives, or maybe clenches, and she thinks,  _I want to kiss you._

Before she can do something unbearably stupid, however, she flees.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Continuation! Conversation! Food I wish I had! Expansion of this universe! (Also, Shishio popped up and uh, he's Kenshin's...frenemy, I guess? Company picnics sound hilariously dangerous with these two involved.)

"It's bad form, I think," the redhead—Kenshin—says mildly when she returns the phone to its cradle with rather more force than strictly necessary, "to say, 'I told you so,' but—"

"You told me so," Kaoru growls at him, and glares at his fancy cordless phone set for good measure. "I can't believe it. Chicago gets hit with blizzards all the time." She cracks her knuckles, an old, old habit, and one she'd never quite gotten around to breaking. " _One_  cab company I can imagine. Two would be pushing it—but  _all_  of them? All of them telling me that their services are unavailable?" She's glad they've established some bizarre sense of normalcy though, now that she's tied up her hair, scrubbed her face with good old-fashioned Irish Spring, and donned his old sweats—which smelled disconcertingly like freesia—and wadded up that monstrosity of a dress into a ball in her lap. She makes silent, savage plans to burn it when she gets the chance.

Kenshin merely taps away steadily on his very shiny laptop. "Well, according to Weather Underground, this is the worst blizzard to hit northern Illinois in quite a while. Fourteen to twenty inches, and it's not going to stop until late tomorrow. Certainly worse than was expected."

Kaoru purses her lips. "But they always say that," and even she can hear the petulance in her tone. Well, nothing for it—time to woman up, then, before she did anything more to convince Kenshin that she was still a sulky teenager. "I'll have to ask you for your couch until the snow stops, then." She sneaks a glance out the front window and grimaces; the snow is sheeting along in fine form, thick and heavy. "I really am sorry about the—misunderstanding and any inconvenience."

"And as I told you before, my couch is yours until you no longer require its services," he says, and his eyes—which are a curious shade of blue that's almost purple, but Kaoru shrugs that off as a trick of the light, because purple eyes don't exist outside the boxes of romance novels she's hiding under her bed—twinkle as he does. He rises and runs his hands through his hair, and Kaoru's breath stops for moment. His hair moves like liquid fire crossed with a shampoo commercial, and throws his face into sharp relief: he has an almost delicately fey beauty to his features with high, sharp cheekbones, an aquiline nose, and a chin more pointed than stubborn. Her eyes are invariably drawn to the scar, and Kaoru feels a chill that has nothing to do with windy nights and snowy skies.

But he blinks at her and breaks the spell. "Do you have any food allergies?" he asks.

"Um," Kaoru says, tearing her eyes away from his face. "Peanuts. I blow up like a balloon."

"Good, good, we'll avoid those," Kenshin says and moves past her into the kitchen through an arched doorway to her left. "How do you feel about pasta?"

"Wait," she blurts as she follows him. "I don't want to go to any trouble on my account." She emerges into a kitchen that is as homey as the rest of his apartment. The countertops are clean but not surgically; there are dishes left in the drying rack; a bowl of fruit sits on one counter.

"Nonsense," Kenshin says from the direction of the fridge. "It's no more trouble to cook for two than it is for one." He straightens with an armful of vegetables and a smile on his face. "Oh, I forgot to ask, I'm sorry. Have you any dietary restrictions?"

She smiles back and the dregs of her bad mood begin to dissipate. "None. Well, aside from a two-month pescetarian stint in college."

"Well, then. Far be it from me to let a lady go hungry especially if she is missing a bachelorette party on my account."

"And whoever said chivalry was dead hadn't met you." Kaoru raises an eyebrow at him and injects a little steel into her voice, but smiles anyway to soften it. "Stop hitting on me, Kenshin. We've established that I'm not a stripper, remember?"

He grins sheepishly and runs a hand through his hair again. "That wasn't my intention. I suppose I should tell you that I don't really make it a habit to spend my evenings with—well, virtual strangers." He shrugs and his smile turns wry. "Which was rather the point, I think."

She blinks. "Excuse me?"

"Never mind," he says, and ushers her into the kitchen and stations her before two tomatoes and a small mountain of spinach. He puts a gleaming knife in her hand. "Attend," he says, and walks away to do something more complicated involving multiple pots.

"Are you sure you can trust me with this?" Kaoru asks, but is rather glad that she isn't leaving him to do all the work. She may be a disaster in the kitchen, but even she can do this. Besides, being armed always cheers her up.

"Quite sure."

She chuckles. "How big do you want the pieces?"

"It doesn't matter overmuch," he replies. "Smallish."

She can handle smallish. They work in steady rhythm as Kaoru concentrates on not squishing the tomatoes into juice and getting the spinach to sit still long enough for her to do some damage. All the while, she watches Kenshin out of the corner of her eye, and gleans what she'd missed before. He moves with an almost preternatural grace in the confines of the kitchen. His economy of movement, the surety of his motions, his utter awareness of his surroundings: of course. He is a martial artist.

She clears her throat. "Do you have any hobbies, Kenshin?"

"Hmm?" he says absently. "Are you about done with those vegetables? Oh, good, pass them here." He sweeps the cutting board away from her and dumps the contents of it into a merrily bubbling pot. Then, as though he'd only then registered that she'd spoken, he looks up at her. "You were saying, Ms. Kaoru?"

"Hobbies," Kaoru says, and leans against the counter, facing him.

"Hobbies? Well, I work quite a bit. I'm a bit of an amateur kickboxer and I do a fair bit of  _kendo._  I have, ever since I was very young." He passes her a bowl of leafy greenery and a bottle of oil. "Toss that for me, would you?"

"Have you ever competed in kendo tournaments?" she asks. "I'm trying to remember if I've ever seen your name anywhere or heard it—I'm a bit of a kendo enthusiast myself. I was a national champion in high school."

"Very impressive," he says, and he sounds it. "Why did you stop?"

She presses her lips together. "College, I suppose. Life." And how very sick of it all she had been, and very sick of Daddy, and been so full of wanting something different and new. Of course, Daddy hadn't made it through her first year of college; his heart had given out finally and the  _dojo_  had gone silent and a gaping hole had opened in her heart and in her life. Three mornings a week still, she'll pull on her old gear and practice in the old  _dojo_ , and hope Daddy is watching and that it gives him a bit of comfort. "Did you compete?"

"Not as such, no," he says, and his voice tightens ever so slightly. This is not a welcome topic. Perhaps he has as many issues tied up in sticks of bamboo as she does, so she doesn't press him.  _Some things_ , she reflects as she liberally splatters lettuce with olive oil,  _one does not discuss with strangers_.

* * *

Ms. Kaoru Kamiya, Kenshin decides, is a woman who appreciates food.

Kenshin reflects on that fact as he forks a bit of pasta into his own mouth. He's made it a bit of a habit to feed various acquaintances and friends over the years—even that bastard Shisho, who did not deserve it at all—and catalogues how they all enjoy his food. Aoshi eats with polite, razor-sharp precision and, being a man of very few words but also, somehow, of great courtesy, he'd never—as far as Kenshin could remember—ever left any food on his plate; Sano eats with enthusiasm and gusto and always asks for seconds, thirds, and offers to finish off whatever is left at the bottom of the pot; Megumi eats to analyze and tease out the whys and whyfores of the marriage of spice and flavor; Hiko eats and criticizes and washes everything down with enough sake to numb his palate but eats more anyway; and Shishio likes to burn all of the meat Kenshin spends days marinating to perfection and brings to the annual company barbeque because he's a closet pyromaniac and kind of a dick.

Kaoru eats like she loves it. She eats with full-bodied, unashamed joy. She doesn't peck at her food or take little bites or demur and say she's watching her figure—she takes big, ravenous bites and looks like she means it.

"This," she says, when she takes a moment to gulp down a bit of the very excellent apple cider one of his clients sends him every Christmas, "is heaven on a plate."

He smiles. "I wish you wouldn't hit on me, Miss Kaoru. We've established that  _I_ 'm not a stripper either."

"I bet they love you at parties," she says, smiling back at him, "but I'm serious. How did you  _do_  this? No, no, actually, don't tell me, because I'll try it and burn my apartment complex down."

"Surely you can't be—"  _Inept_  is rude.  _Ham-handed_  is an insult to her hands, which are very fine.  _Clumsy_  brings to mind gawky adolescence, which is a stage this woman is most definitely past, thank Heavens. "—quite so unlucky?"

She snorts. It is most decidedly indelicate and unfeminine, but Kenshin is charmed despite himself. "You don't know me. I once set an oven on fire trying to bake cornbread. From a  _box_ , mind."

He ducks his head to hide a grin and makes his voice appropriately grave. "I see. I'd offer you my apologies but you'd stick me with one of your shoes."

She rolls her eyes and busies herself with her food again, but she eats slower, obviously thinking. Finally, she says, "Can I ask you a personal question?"

Kenshin's spine tightens. His scar, perhaps. Or maybe why he wasn't out enjoying himself on New Year's Eve. "You may ask, but I'll reserve the right not to answer, if that's all right with you."

She nods, frowning. "Kenshin, why did you order a stripper into your home?"

He almost chokes on a stray noodle in relief.

She goes on, "I can't understand it. You're good-looking, an excellent cook, and almost definitely employed. If you really wanted female company so badly, you could have—you could have just picked up a woman at a bar or something. You just don't seem the stripper sort."

"You sound very anti-stripper, Miss. One could even say  _puritanical_ ," he says. "And I wonder what the 'stripper sort'  _is_."

She rolls her eyes at him again. "Antisocial, unconfident, unhygienic, has issues with women and is unable to hold normal conversations with them—hence, the purchase of a woman's company and sexual favors. Or, conversely, he—or she, though the probability of that being the case is pretty low—could be suave, arrogant, chauvinistic and have issues with women and be unable to see them in terms of anything besides their value as sexual objects to him—hence, the purchase of a woman's company and sexual favors. Both of these men sound like asshats. Kenshin, you're not an asshat. I don't like asshats, and I very much want to like you. So. Why the stripper?"

Kenshin watches her eyes as she speaks. There's nothing very marvelous about them until one discerned the intelligence sparking in their depths, when they became very marvelous, indeed. "Well," he says. "The long and short of it is that the stripper was  _not_  my idea. She had been ordered in  _for_  me."

She rests her chin on her fist while exasperated incredulity spreads over her face. "Now whoever did  _that_ ," she says decidedly, "is an asshat. If you don't mind my saying."

Kenshin has called Hiko many names—both affectionate and angry—over the years, but he's never come quite so close to the essence of what Hiko actually  _is_.  _Asshat_  is quite wonderfully fitting. Kenshin puts his forehead into his hand and shakes with laughter. "I'm sorry," he finally gasps, wiping a tear away from his eye. "I'm sorry. It's just—if you knew him—"

Kaoru raises her eyebrows at him bemusedly. "Who is this guy?"

Kenshin can't remember the last time he'd ever laughed so much his stomach hurt. It feels unaccountably good. "Pardon?"

"This person—this...this asshat. Who is he? Friend, family, college roommate from hell?"

Hiko is many things to Kenshin: rescuer, master, tormentor, unrelenting critic and unwelcome wine expert. But above all—"He's family," Kenshin says firmly. "My father."

She huffs out an incredulous laugh. "And I thought  _I_ had it bad when my dad wouldn't let me date anyone until I'd moved out for college. But then, we forgive family and friends for doing things we'd shoot anybody else in the head for, so I kind of understand."

Kenshin absorbs that for a moment. While he wouldn't have  _shot_  anybody who pulled that stripper prank on him, Kenshin would have gone out of his way to make that person's day less than pleasant; he would, perhaps, make strategic calls to the IRS or even file an injunction or two. But Hiko was Hiko; in Kenshin's earliest memories, after the ones with blood and fire and hunger, is Hiko's hand on his head and the rumble of Hiko's voice under his cheek. Nothing could bring Kenshin to betray that.

"Would you mind if I asked you a personal question?" Kenshin asks before she takes it upon herself to ask more about Hiko. There are demons lurking there he's never told anyone about—not even Tomoe had known, not entirely. But then, they had known so little of each other, even if her loss had crippled him. "You don't have to answer of course."

"Shoot," she says.

"Why on earth were  _you_  masquerading as a stripper tonight? In a  _cake_ , no less?"

The answer quivers on her mouth but she says, "You'll think I'm an idiot."

"You said it yourself: we forgive family and friends for doing things we'd shoot anybody else in the head for. It holds that we'd do stupid things for our friends as well."

"I don't know." She shakes her head. "I still have some self-respect, believe it or not."

"Keep your self-respect. I have a macadamia fudge torte that I'll withhold."

Her mouth drops open. "You don't mean that!"

"I don't. But I must admit, I'm curious. Megumi alluded to it but—"

"Oh, all right," Kaoru says. She sighs. "My so-called friends convinced me to ride to a bachelorette party in a cake to make the occasion—I think 'festive' was the word one of them used."

"I have two questions," Kenshin says. "Actually, I have one question and one point of clarification."

"Go on," she says, smiling with a combination of sheepishness and belligerent exasperation.

"Clarification first. Isn't it the norm to hire male strippers for bachelorette parties?"

"Well, yes," Kaoru says. "Which would be the case if the couple in question were not lesbians. It doesn't make much sense to have male strippers strutting about if neither Shura nor Sayo are into them, you know what I mean? The party was for them, after all."

Kenshin nods. "Understood. Now, my question: why not just hire a female stripper to begin with?"

"That's what I asked! But it's because Sayo isn't very hot on the idea. She objects to woman being reduced to the sum of their—uh, fuckability, I think is the term she used. No, actually, it's  _Misao_ —another friend of ours—who says that a lot. Sayo wouldn't say that because she's so prim and proper, she's straight out of the Victorian era, though Shura would because she's great like that. I don't know her very well. Anyway, Sayo's not too keen on women being reduced to the sum of their anatomical parts and then appraised based on an entirely arbitrary scale of attractiveness. So, actual stripper was not an option, but they wanted to—" she shrugs, looking for words "—to, I don't know, keep it a traditional bachelorette party, but sort of in a wink, wink, nudge, nudge way." She throws up her hands. "I don't know. I don't know why I agreed to it. It was  _beyond the pale_ , as I think Sayo would say."

"You were doing it for friends, which I think makes it a worthwhile effort," Kenshin says, trying not to smile and failing.

She slides him an ironic glance. "Riding in a cake to god-knows-where in six-inch heels and in a sequined monstrosity of a dress with no coat in the belly of winter, all because of some half-baked plan to have a laugh at a party we were all going to be too drunk to remember anyway was  _worthwhile_? Kenshin, it was  _stupid_."

"I didn't say it wasn't…ill-advised," he says, and smiles some more. "But very generous still."

"Right," Kaoru snorts. "Because  _that's_  what's important in this scenario. Enough about this," she says, waving an imperious hand at the table. "You said something about a macadamia fudge torte?"

Kenshin smiles and obliges.


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In which there is much pseudo-pretentiousness as I can cram. These poems? My loves. These movies? My loves. (Though I really did enjoy The Avengers!) In which, also, there is nothing resolved, but Kenshin visits everywhere I have been, and I couple places I would really like to go, and in which I give Aoshi some really ridiculous hobbies. (And the Aladdin every night for two years? My grandfather did that with me.) (This thing is so autobiographical I don't even know.)

"This lawyering thing," Kenshin says. "It's actually pretty recent. I'm not going to be made partner at my firm for years." Which is good, ultimately. He still isn't sure Lady Justice is the woman with whom he wants to spend the rest of his life.

"How recent?"

"Two years or so."

She looks at him askance. "How old  _are_  you, anyway?"

"How old do I look?"

She shrugs. "Twenty-four, twenty-five. Twenty-eight tops."

He resists the urge to smile. "You're not far off. I'm thirty."

She shoots half off her seat. "No way!"

"I'm flattered."

Her amazement gives way to almost fond exasperation. "How do you look so young? Did you, like, bathe in the blood of virgins? Make a pact with the devil? Are you actually Ponce de León and did you find the Fountain of Youth? Because if you did, bottle and sell that shit."

For the second time that night, he bursts out laughing. "Well, they all  _said_  they were virgins, but I have my doubts about one or two of them."

She snorts. "And that hair!"

"What about my hair?"

"What court of law takes you seriously with hair that long? My dad would say that you need a damned haircut. It's really very nice, so I'm assuming virgin blood makes for excellent conditioner."

"That it does. The courts, unfortunately, take my sharp three-piece suits a lot more seriously than they do my hair and any left-over eighties fever I might have, thank God."

"Well, you are all party in the back, though calling it achy-breaky hair might be an insult."

"It  _is_ , actually. I can't stand that song."

She grins mischievously, and begins warbling terribly off-key, "But don't tell my heart, my achy breaky heart / I just don't think it'd understand / And if you tell my heart, my achy breaky heart / He might blow up and kill this man!  _Ooooooh_![i]"

He finds himself laughing again.

"Yeah, yeah," she says. "I'm not cut out for  _American Idol_ , I know."

"Actually, from what I understand, they're liable to keep you around for the comic value. Think Sanjaya Malakar circa 2007."

"You can be really mean when you put your mind to it, you know that?" She sticks her tongue out at him. "So, if you just started this lawyer gig recently, what where you doing for all those years before?"

"I completed my undergrad BA in 2002 and then I just…went. I left. I needed to clear my head and I took a cue from Hiko—the man I told you about earlier—and wandered around for a while."

"Where did you go? California? Europe?"

A smile tugs at his mouth. "Italy, at first. Then I caught a boat to Cairo and spent a few months in Egypt. Cairo is lovely."

"What was your favorite thing about it?"

He thinks for a moment. "That the bridges over the Nile haven't got chicken wire up their sides."

"I don't understand."

"Let me explain." The words, kept hidden for so long in his mind, tumble out. He isn't sure if he can stop the flood, or even if he wants to. "Every evening, students, young people, couples in love—they all go to the bridges and they spend time there, 'shooting the breeze' as they say. No one has to worry that anyone's going to throw themselves over the side; hence, the lack of wire. Evenings on the Nile were wonderful. I learned to speak some form of pidgin Arabic there. I'm told my accent is terrible."

Her eyes are glowing with curiosity. "Then?"

"Then I got myself to Turkey, spent about a year in Istanbul alone, read a lot of Rumi. I'm telling you—if you want a place that's so beautiful it'll burn itself into your retinas, go to Istanbul. So, I wandered around there and in Greece for a bit, then headed to India because if I was looking for spirituality, there's no better place, right?" He shakes his head. "I learned more about cooking and the use of spice and flavor there than I did in Italy. I spent a few weeks at a Buddist monastery in Maharashtra, then headed south and spent some time in Hyderabad."

"And? Did you reach enlightenment?"

Did he? He didn't think so. "All I learned is that human nature is a coiled, well-sprung beast we're all trying to wrestle into submission."

"Well," she says slowly, "if religion is an attempt at giving all human actions meaning, then giving all of us a heroic struggle—even if it is against our baser selves—follows logically, doesn't it? We've all got darker impulses; we learn how to control them, and if religion is from where we draw our moral codes, then—" she shrugs elegantly "—so be it, I think."

"You are uncommonly wise." He supposes it's just as well she doesn't know just how dark his impulses had gotten all those years ago.

"Thank you. Where did you go after India?"

"So…that would be 2005…I got on a bus and went to China. I spent a lot of my time in Guanxi, a lot of it in Beihai earning money, the rest moving along the Lijiang River. The countryside there…" He gropes for words for how beautiful it is, how the light would set the water aflame, how the mountains wore mists and greenery like women in other worlds wore saris, how the arrangements of white, white clouds in an endless blue sky could at times bring tears to his eyes. "Gibran once wrote, 'Yet in truth you spoke not of her but of needs unsatisfied, / And beauty is not a need but an ecstasy. / It is not a mouth thirsting nor an empty hand stretched forth, / But rather a heart enflamed and a soul enchanted[ii].' I don't always agree with what Gibran says, but in that poem, there's truth. The time I spent on the Lijiang River was…" Was both the best and the worst of his life. "Enlightening."

She is silent for a while. He wonders what she made of his speech, of all that he had and hadn't said. Perhaps, if their acquaintance spins out into friendship, he'd tell her what he'd learnt in the rice paddies and the mountain of Guanxi: that the world is a much more vast, much more vital cosmos than him and his worries, and he would be a fool to only see this beauty and not touch, not sip, and not  _live_  in it. The world had enraptured and filled him; he had been slow in answering the call, and over the years, it had grown faint, but it still beats in time with his heart. Perhaps  _that_  was what Hiko had set out to remind him, this night.

"You know my favorite Gibran poem?" she asks, her voice curiously husky.

"Tell me."

"It's from  _The Prophet_ ," she says. "I read it a long time ago, so bear with me." She clears her throat. "'Then Almitra spoke again and said, "And what of Marriage, master?" / And he answered saying: / You were born together, / and together you shall be forevermore. / You shall be together when / white wings of death scatter your days. / Aye, you shall be together even in the silent memory of God. / But let there be spaces in your togetherness, / And let the winds of the heavens dance between you. / Love one another but make not a bond of love: / Let it rather be a moving sea between the shores of your souls. / Fill each other's cup but drink not from one cup.'"

Her voice fills his head with an electrifying buzz; he would go on forever if he could, listening to this woman recite poems most of which most people did not even know the existence, of the poems that had filled so much of his life.

"'Give one another of your bread but eat not from the same loaf. / Sing and dance together and be joyous, / but let each one of you be alone,/ Even as the strings of a lute are alone though they quiver with the same music. / Give your hearts, but not into each other's keeping. / For only the hand of Life can contain your hearts. / And stand together, yet not too near together: / For the pillars of the temple stand apart, / And the oak tree and the cypress grow not in each other's shadow[iii].'" She flushes and looks at her lap, her cheeks blooming pink. "BA in English," she says, sheepish. "And I might not agree with most of Gibran's themes either, but that one…that one I really, really love."

 _If she quotes the Masnavi, I'm proposing_ , Kenshint thinks foolishly, a little bit enraptured. "I can see why."

"It encapsulates so much of what Gibran was all about," she says, as though she needs to defend her choice. "Or, one of the things. You know, the fundamental truth of the human condition—we are all wretchedly alone in our own heads—"

"—but we may seek alleviation of that loneliness by applying to others for company and love—"

"—however incomplete that connection may be." She smiles. "Sorry about that. Here you were, reciting poetry to me, and all I've contributed was my achy breaky heart. I needed to even the scale a bit."

He wants to touch her hands. The fervency of that impulse holds him back. He's had long practice holding his impulses in check. "You don't ever have to apologize."

"All right." She presses her lips together, as though suppressing a smile. She fails and it fights free. "So, we were in China. Where did you go next?"

The queer spell that had held him in her thrall breaks. "Next, I hopped a boat to Japan. I spent about a year there, backpacking in the countryside, mostly. I'd had enough of cities by then."

"Wait," she says suddenly. " _Japan_. Sano met  _you_  in Japan?"

"Guilty."

" _You_  helped him beat up those Yakuza thugs?" She seems genuinely delighted. " _You're_  the friend he keeps talking about?"

"If he keeps talking about me, I wonder why we haven't met before."

"That would be mostly your fault. You're the workaholic."

"Guilty again," he says.

* * *

Kaoru runs this current revelation over in her mind, reevaluating. Her heart beats louder in her ears. What had Sano said about the man who stumbled into his idiotic confrontation with the local Yakuza in his hometown? "He moved like the wind," she remembers Sano saying. "You couldn't even  _see_  him." And he's said something else, about a remarkable sword that functioned more like a blunt instrument.

"You must be an amazing martial artist," she says. "Sano said neither of you used guns—which is why the police let you off. Where did you come up with a sword in the middle of a Mexican stand-off with the Yakuza, anyway?"

A wry smile curls his lips. She's learning to categorize his smiles: the wide one for polite evasion, the open-mouthed one for true amusement, the small, barely detectable one for something he found amusing but didn't want to share. This one is dry and self-deprecating. "I took three important things with me when I left Chicago all those years ago: my passport, a notebook, and that sword." He jerks his chin to the far wall, where a lone sword is leaning against the wall. Unlike the pair of  _daisho_  displayed on the stand, this sword sports an unraveling, threadbare hilt that holds, even now, an imprint of a hand, and its scabbard is scuffed and worn.

"A sword?" she asks. Something about the old sword draws her eye. She could accuse him of disrespect, she supposes, but this sword does not  _feel_  disrespected; it feels, instead, like an old, faithful, watchful friend.

"I don't like guns." He runs a hand through his hair, still smiling that strange smile. "And when my mas—my father got wind of my plans, he had that one especially made for me. He'd taught me—well enough, I suppose, and nothing's better for self-defense than something you're already familiar with."

"They let you on the plane with it?"

"It cost me an arm and a leg to get across the Atlantic," he says, "and pretty much grounded me after. But then it made up for all that by saving my life a few dozen times, so I guess we're even."

"It's a good thing you're so well-trained, then," she says, and thinks of Daddy. "Mine trained me, too. My dad, I mean. One of my earliest memories is learning  _kata_  in the family  _dojo_ , believe it or not. What style did you learn?"

His hesitation is slight, a mere tightening of his lips. "My mas—my father is the last remaining master of an ancient school," he says finally.

"You're not a master?" she asks.

"I'm afraid not. We'd had a bit of a—a falling out before I could learn the final move." His face closes even more, his voice lowers, and even his shoulders fold in a little. He doesn't seem to be aware that he's shutting himself down—that the man who had spoken so passionately about rowing down a river on the other side of the world and awakening to its beauty has been disappearing, little by little. Just as well—if she looked at him long when he was like that, he might blind her.

"Well, neither am I," she says. The disappointment and shame burns in her, even now, that she had denied Daddy this pleasure. "I quit before I ever made it that far, and then Daddy died and…well, that's that, I guess. If I ever want to become master, I'd have to go to Japan and train under one of my uncles there."

"I'm sorry about your father," he says, his voice quiet. "I may not get along with mine—I may not even  _like_  him most of the time, but I think—I don't know what I'd do if I didn't know that he was out there somewhere, tasting wines and getting drunk and philosophical."

"Philosophical?" She feels an involuntary smile tug at her mouth.

"He doesn't drunk-text, he drunk- _essays_ ," Kenshin says emphatically.

She laughs. "My dad never made it that far. He had the gremlins—technology would explode around him. So, if you don't mind my asking, what made you decide to come back?"

He takes a moment to reorient himself. "Back? Well, a good many things, really. I came to the realization that I couldn't spend the rest of my life wandering around the world. I mean, I'd met a great many people but…I wanted  _permanence_ , I suppose. I'd spent more time in Chicago than anywhere else, and Sano offered me his couch until I could get back on my feet. So Chicago it was."

"And you jumped straight into law school?"

He shrugged, and that hesitance crossed his features again. "I met a lot of people when I traveled, people who were rich and poor, healthy and sick, generous and miserly. A lot of good people, and some people I would rather not have met." His eyes flick to the sword in the corner. "And so many of them were helpless—helpless before the law, before other people, before the lawlessness of places that lacked stability. We—I— _we_ , the sword and I, we helped as best we could. I figured that I might as well learn how to do it legally, that's all."

His speech washes over her, like the way his stories of his travels had, the way his poetry had. She feels a strange tug in the vicinity of her heart. "You're a good man, Kenshin Himura." And she means it, she realizes, means it down to her bones.

He only smiles, and this time, there are a thousand sadnesses in it. The topic of his wanderings is closed, she decides firmly. Perhaps, if they remain friends, he will tell her and do so because he wants to, and not because she'd been rabidly curious and wheedled and whined it out of him.

So she says, "How strange was it for you to jump back into…this?" She gestures around the room. "Into the cesspool of American pop-culture after all your time away? I mean, you know who Sanjaya Malakar is."

"Strange," he says. "Very, very strange. 'I am known to night and horses and the desert, to sword and lance, to parchment and pen[iv].' Not so much, you know, to all this pop-culture nonsense. It took Sano an hour to explain what a  _meme_  was to me and I'm still not sure I understand it."

The verse and the unique cadences of his voice ripple through Kaoru's head.  _If he keeps doing that, I'll jump his bones_ , she thinks. "Come on, you can't be all that bad at it. Favorite Bond?" Kaoru asks.

He thinks for a moment. "Connery."

"Nishe," she says in a passable imitation of Connery's distinctive accent.

He smiles. "Yours?"

"Brosnan."

"Really? Why?" Kenshin raises one disdainful eyebrow. "I  _have_  seen  _Die Another Day,_  thanks to Sano. The entire thing is a colossal waste of time, money and Halle Berry."

"Because it's hilarious in hindsight when you watch Meryl Streep school him in  _Mamma Mia!_  to the tune of 'The Winner Takes it All'."

"You don't think much of James Bond, do you?"

"Not in the least. And now, with that blonde man playing him, he's gotten ironically dark and gritty and  _ew_." She wrinkles her nose. "Which isn't to say that spy movies shouldn't be gritty and unglamorous and whatever; it's just that when I go to see a James Bond movie, I expect camp and ridiculousness and women named  _Pussy Galore_. It's a brand. If I wanted  _Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy_ , I'd go watch  _that_ instead." She wrinkles her nose. "Not that I'd want to, mind. Not even the combined powers of Colin Firth, Benedict Cumberbatch, and Tom Hardy could salvage that mess."

He peers at her over the rims of his glasses. "I wonder if you could explain the current glut of comic book movies to me, then. I don't understand them."

"What's not to understand? Lots of explosions, spectacular effects, and hot men running around in tights."

Kenshin still looks endearingly perplexed. "I get to a point when I've almost wrapped my head around it, and then I remember that one of them is called  _Captain America_ , another is a  _literal_  Norse god, and the third is Samuel L. Jackson with an eye-patch."

"I've heard it explained this way: these heroes give us faithless common mythologies upon which our collective conflicts and truths can be explored."

He still looks dubious. "Right."

"I don't really know much about them, though," she confesses. "I haven't actually read many comic books."

"And yet—"

"Look, I watch cartoons, pick up the odd comic every now and again, and spend a lot of time with my eleven-year-old cousin."

"You must spend a good deal of your time with children. I remember you told me as you popped out of the…uh, cake—you said you are a teacher?"

She blinks in surprise that he remembers, then thinks that she shouldn't be surprised at it at all. Kenshin is thoughtful, and considers every word before he says it; that he should give her words such consideration is immensely flattering and a little unnerving, but not surprising. "Yes. I teach fourth grade at a school up back in the suburbs. A tiny corner of the world called Burbank."

"I'm not familiar with that particular corner."

"Yeah, but you kind of make up for it with your familiarity with a lot of other corners."

He chuckles, then smiles a bit wonderingly. "Why did you decide to pursue that career track?"

"Because my dad was one," she says, and tries not to squirm. "I know, I know, this might be my very own misguided way to clinging to his memory but…I'd always wanted to be a teacher. I've always been good at it, and it, you know, makes me happy. I took the liberty of telling my therapist to suck eggs when she suggested that this was how my daddy issues decided to manifest themselves."

"Good on you. You know, I've come to learn over the years that we've got enough doctors and lawyers in this world. What we need are more teachers." He smiles at her, bright and open and a little bit admiring.

And because he might understand, she says, "I haven't been at it very long. You can tell, I guess, because I still love it. People, colleagues, tell me all the time—you can't fight the system, kids are going to slip through the cracks, so you learn to slop yourself to work and count down until you give the educational system the finger and retire. You know, 'This old town will wear you out / people taking the easy way[v]'. But my dad was a teacher. He'd been a teacher for thirty-three years when he died and he  _never_  said a thing like that. He told me once, when I told him that I wanted to become a teacher, he said, 'Each and every child you teach is entrusted to you. Take care you don't fail them.' So that's what I try, I guess. I try not to fail them. And, oh  _God_ , that was a terrible pun."

His eyes rest on her face, warm and soft and romance novel purple. "Your father was a wise man."

She will not cry. "If I ever want proof that my father loved me," she says, a fond smile on her face, "I've got it. The man watched  _Aladdin_  with me every night for two years."

"Every night?"

"Every night," she repeats firmly. "It's kind of a security blanket movie for me, even now."

He rubs his chin. "Remind me. It's got that boy in a vest and—Robin Williams is the genie?"

She chuckles. "Yes. Don't bother remembering the rest. It's not actually a very good movie unless you're wearing nostalgia goggles."

"And you wear those often, do you?"

"I'm a nineties kid! I grew up smack-dab in the middle of the Disney Renaissance. I know they're evil geniuses and that it's a terrifying thought that one of our country's moral guardians is a company that makes profits off of those very same stringent, straight-laced, white middle class morals they try so very hard to keep front-and-center in our cultural consciousness, and everything they put out is really heteronormative and they have an appallingly small number of characters who are people of color, but I can't help but  _love the pants off of every single one those movies_."

He opens his mouth, closes it, ponders, and then says, "I can understand that, in part, I suppose. I, for example, really, really like  _Ghostbusters_."

She giggles. " _Ghostbusters_? 1984?"

An open-mouthed smile this time. "The very one."

"Come on," she says, "If you're looking for Dan Aykroyd—and I'll give you the benefit of the doubt about liking Bill Murray's character—you could just watch  _The Blues Brothers_  or  _Dragnet_.  _Much_  better movies, both of them."

"You know," he says slowly, "I do have a Netflix account. I could check to see if either of those are on instant, if you wouldn't mind watching those movies with me."

"You have a  _Netflix_  account? Why?" She laughs at him. "And yes, I'll watch them with you."

He sighs. "I have a friend who really likes period dramas. We watch those when he's in town—he's got a highly stressful job and it's how he winds down—" He closes his mouth with a snap.

"Go on," Kaoru teases. "What do you two watch? Catherine Cookson miniseries?"

His eyes crinkle in the corners. "Aoshi will probably strangle me for telling anyone this. We actually burned through all of  _Downton Abbey_  last time he was in town. Before that, it was  _Legend of the Condor Heroes_."

"This Aoshi," Kaoru says, "has excellent taste."

* * *

i. I don't think this particular song needs introduction, but here, have it anyway: "Don't Tell My Heart", written in by Don Van Tress, recorded by the Marcy Brothers in 1991, and then by our favorite be-mullet-ed sitcom-TV daddy of them all, Billy Ray Cyrus, when it was rechristened "Achy Breaky Heart".

ii.  _Beauty XXV_  by Khalil Gibran, from  _The Prophet._

iii.  _On Marriage_  by Khalil Gibran, from  _The Prophet._

iv. Abu'l-Tayyib Ahmad ibn Husayn al-Mutanabbi, a man who thought a great deal of himself and ultimately died while trying to defend his claim to these words sometime around the year 945 AD.

v.  _Princess and the Frog,_ from the song "Almost There".


	5. Chapter 5

Kenshin clears his throat. "He's a lawyer and, ah, partner at the firm."

" _Partner_?" She half rises out of her cozy nest at the end of his couch in indignation. "Who thought  _that_  would be a good idea?"

"They all thought it would be a great idea." Kenshin presses his lips together in clear disapproval. "The thing is, I can't deny that he's excellent in the courtroom."

"But…?"

"He's also cruel, vindictive, abrasive, entitled and a—a complete douche bag."

Kaoru whistles long and low. "And that would be a quarter for the swear jar."

"Oh, I'm sorry if I offended you, but this man—he deserves it."

"No, no, you didn't! I just spend too much of my time around thirteen-year-olds. But how did this guy make partner so young anyway? He sounds like a complete sociopath."

"That's exactly it. He is a complete sociopath, and the attendant qualities make him an excellent lawyer." Kenshin rubs the back of his neck. "I will say this—Shishio's got a code of honor. It's arcane and obscure and I disagree with its very foundational basis, but he's got one."

"Meaning…?"

"In practice, it means he won't screw you over, but won't lift a finger while you do it yourself." Kenshin grimaces. "I think he took all that Nietzsche a little too seriously. Everyone reads in it college but I don't—I  _didn't_  think anyone really believed it."

"You can't be serious. I mean…what was it he said? Besides, 'God is dead,' I mean. I only read The Genealogy of Morality, so…" She snaps her fingers, trying to remember. "That it's 'hostile to life' if every will be considered equal?"

Kenshin shrugs. "Well, you've got to define your terms and set your parameters. It  _would_  be hostile to life if every will was considered equal if my will was to cut everyone down with my handy-dandy sword."

She flaps a hand in his direction. "You know what I mean. It would be detrimental to life if everyone were considered equal because then we'd essentially be giving the meek the earth when it was really the strong who deserved it. That the 'strong' come out on top and crush the 'weak' beneath their diamond-covered boots at leisure."

"It speaks much more to a libertarian mindset, actually, because Shishio's pretty big on individual liberties and that stupid bootstraps mentality." He actually wrinkles his nose delicately. She almost expects him to whip out a lacey handkerchief and disdainfully sniff it. "But the fact of the matter remains—you  _didn't_  build it yourself, whatever you think it is and no matter what Shishio thinks. Might does  _not_  make right—you can't go around stomping on the little guy, he who has been systematically disadvantaged and denied opportunity from birth, just because you were born rich or privileged."

"Exactly!" Kaoru agrees. "And talking about bootstraps—that mentality presupposes that everyone starts on the same platform, that they're born with the same advantages, and completely ignores that that isn't the case at all!"

"We all exist at different intersections of privilege and disadvantage." He gestures generously with his cup of cocoa. "To suppose that everyone is given the same chances of success and then to use any success one has—which, more often than not, can be attributed to societal mores that are skewed to grant success to certain demographics over others—to, in essence, bully more unfortunate others, is, I think, morally reprehensible."

"Well," she says, smiling, "Someone forgot to tell the Republicans that."

Kenshin laughs, delighted. "You're a tree-hugging liberal too?"

"I drive a Volvo, chug soy-lattes, and have been known to enjoy the occasional bit of sushi. I also vote Green. You be the judge." Kaoru sips some of Kenshin's excellent hot chocolate, which he's made out of genuine chunks of milk chocolate he'd pulled out of his pantry. "Anyway, this Shishio person. He sounds terrible, and not just because he seems like he sprung from Ayn Rand's imagination."

"Ayn Rand is the sort of author you read when you're seventeen and desperate to feel like a special snowflake who could smash through the glass ceilings if only those lazy, selfish, unwashed masses would stop clinging to you." Kenshin rolls his eyes. "In Shishio's mind, there are only those who cling, and those who toss the clingers off into yawning abysses. Idiot. Our society is too complex for that sort of framework."

Kaoru smiles. "Rand's also just a terrible writer in general. She doesn't write novels full of ideas, but ideas with a thin, novel-like veneer. But it's got this really gross way of getting inside you, because I read  _Atlas Shrugged_  when I was seventeen, and I was liberal and liberal could get, even then, and I could see how people could come out of this genuinely wanting to be John Galt. It's insidious."

"That's because it speaks so well to the welfare queen myth that's so prevalent in the cultural consciousness, even now—it just goes to show, when you have half of your political system engineered to run on xenophobia and racial hatred and utterly damaging capitalist, classist ideas—"

"Along with a complete disregard for lived reality—"

"—then you've got a problem."

"Exactly. Add to that a corporatized news media, an increasingly polarized electorate, and a legislative branch filled with grown-ass men who use playground bully tactics—well, you do the math."

"Another thing I did not miss—American politics."

"Did you vote, while you were floating out there on the wind?"

"Yes, though I learned to keep my mouth shut about being American after a while. Most of the world is pretty angry with us right now. I noticed it everywhere I went, actually, Egypt, India, Turkey—Americans think that those counties are insular, backwards, poor, while  _they_  think America is arrogant, materialistic, militaristic, a cultural colonizer. The thing is, though, they're not wrong."

"Does it matter if you're referring to America in the abstract or concrete? Because I feel like you're talking about America in a purely political sense."

"I am, in the same sense that people speak of  _the West_ , as a collection of political entities that espouse specific military and economic policies. Most brown people don't hate individual Americans, but they really hate what America has come to stand for." He drinks his chocolate with a sad cast to his lips. "Military might. Hopeless, self-involved arrogance. Unrepentant neo-colonialism."

"You would know better than I do. I've never been outside the United States."

"Really?"

"Really, really. There was never much money growing up, and I never really had time, and—" She shrugs. helplessly. "Here I am. All of the greater world I've seen, I've seen through movies."

He winces. "Not the best way. Skewed perceptions, thy name is Hollywood."

"I know. Maybe I'll put in some plans to travel this year, but I've still got loans and car payments."  _And no one to travel with_. She feels heat creep up her neck and cheeks, feeling utterly gauche and unsophisticated before him.

"I think you've got the right of it, if that makes you feel any better. I don't regret going, but I went because I needed freedom," he says simply, with nothing of the world-weary, well-travelled sophisticate about him. "I could have stayed here and gone on to grad school and started working and bought my ma—my father a houseboat a full ten years before I finally got around to it. I could have done all of those things, but I'm pretty sure I would have lost my mind." He smiles ruefully. "What's left of it, anyway."

"Do you mind if I ask why? What made you go?" Kaoru studies him over the rim of her cup. He's flung an arm out along the back of his couch; the fingers on the hand not holding his own cup of hot chocolate dig into the cushioning before relaxing.

"Same disclaimer," Kaoru adds. "You have the right not to answer me if you like. Say the word, and I'll shut up."

* * *

She looks particularly delightful, curled up into a ball on the couch that sits kitty-corner to his own. His sweats are a little big on her: the frayed cuffs of his crew-neck sweatshirt go down to nearly her knuckles, so all he can see of her hands are last third of her fingers, holding on to her mug as she carefully sips the hot chocolate he'd made her. Her toes peek out as well, nails painted raspberry pink. Her hair falls in haphazard patterns against her cheeks and neck.

He really, really does not want to tell her. Everything in him rebels at the thought. He has gotten so used to his small circle of friends, of people he cared about who knew of the stains on his soul. Aoshi and Sano are still his friends. Kogoro would never abandon him entirely to the wolves, no matter how many billable hours he did (or didn't) turn in. Okubo still grumbles at him for all his pro-bono work, but never seriously tells him to stop. Shakku still invites him to dinner and cackles about the sakabatou. Shinsaku still can drink him under the table, and still cares to take him out drinking. Hiko knows, and still would send him a condescending text about the freedoms of an artist's soul come morning. He's grown accustomed to their good opinion and how he needs to make no explanations to them, so he has no well-prepared lies to tell her.

He desperately does not want Kaoru to think badly of him. His insides ache at the thought. What a conversation that would be!  _I left this country and everything I'd known behind because I could not stand to look myself in the eye. Why's that, you ask? It's because I stupidly interfered in a gang war and got my girlfriend and her ex-boyfriend killed._  He knows after years of therapy that he's not being very fair to himself, but when he was still twenty-two and had fake diamond studs in his ears and wore his hair tied high on the crown of his head and when the memory of gunshots and Tomoe's body growing colder and colder and glass shattering all around him and the slow, slow slide of blood down his cheek never left him alone, travel had meant the difference between living and eating a bullet.

He doesn't want her to know. God, he wants desperately for her to never find out.

He will have to tell her. He will have to watch her open eyes shutter and her tart, crushed-fruit mouth fall slack in shock _. Look to the mouths for truth,_  a half-forgotten poem had advised him,  _after the eyes offer their shynesses and deceits_.

He doesn't have to examine the whys of his feelings. He  _knows_  why: there are very few people in whom he consciously takes pleasure in talking, and Kaoru is one of them. He wants a relationship with her. He wants to cook her a thousand meals. He wants to do commonplace domestic things with her: he wants to go grocery shopping and argue about the merits of peas and broccoli; he wants to do their laundry and die all their whites pink by accident; he wants to while away the sticky months of summer while they wait for the AC repairman to work his magic with her in his bed and a glass of lemonade on the stand. He wants a joint mortgage, to jointly file taxes, his-and-her bath sets, to have the liberty to pepper her with kisses and to slide his hands across her lower back.

He wants a  _life,_ not a routine existence in a rut he'd never escape. Not on his own, anyway.

So he will tell her. The knowledge drops like a stone in his belly.

"Don't ever feel like you need to shut up. I had a fairly turbulent final year of college," he says finally. "I didn't really come out of it emotionally sound."

She bites her lip. "I didn't mean to dredge up bad memories."

"You didn't. It's been quite a while."

"Still. Bad memories are bad memories, and no one needs that shit stirred up unnecessarily." She mimes zipping her lips. "So. What did you think of the  _Blues Brothers_?"

* * *

She can tell he's thrown for a moment as he blinks at her owlishly, but he rallies. "I thought it was well enough, even though as I kept saying—"

"Church properties are tax-exempt, I know. You said it, like, fifty times."

"I don't believe in not doing one's research. Now, if those writers or producers or anyone on that crew had bothered to look up the pertinent parts of the Illinois tax code—"

"It would not have made any difference at all!" She shakes her head. "Seriously, I don't understand why this is bothering you so much. You were  _twitching_."

"Because it's lazy writing, is what it is. I wouldn't mind if it was a minor plot point, but when your  _entire_  movie revolves around a complete misconception that would have taken all of two minutes to fix, you can't expect any self-respecting lawyer to sit back and enjoy it." He takes an angry sip of hot chocolate. "Really. It's terrible. It's a disgrace."

"It's called  _artistic license_ ," Kaoru teases. "Besides, you've got no confirmation that this universe is, indeed, our universe. It could be an alternate reality much like our own but with different tax regulation."

"Obviously. Different gun control laws, too. How would a woman who owns a salon be able to afford all that ordnance?"

"Oh, that's easy. She was a mob princess, remember?"

Kenshin rolls his eyes again. "Of course she was. What was that you said about different universes? As in, in the millions of universes out there, there's one in which you're Batman?" He wrinkles his nose. "May that is the case, but my goodness, little things like that are irritating."

His consternation is so, so endearing. Her fingers itch to stroke his hair back from his forehead. She wraps them more securely around her mug. "Then you must not read much historical fiction."

"I'm ashamed to say I don't have much time for recreational reading nowadays. Do read very much?"

"Um." Kaoru bites her lip, and wonders how to spin this such that she doesn't come off as a total ninny. Well. As any  _more_  of a ninny, because she'd found that to admit that she voraciously devoured romance novels by the ton was more often than not taken as an admission of mild stupidity. "Historical romance, actually."

In Kaoru's experience, most people fell into two categories: they would raise an eyebrow and ask why a woman so usually erudite would waste her time on  _that drivel_ , or they would giggle and wonder about her proclivities for "mommy porn". Kenshin surprises her again: he does neither. "Is historical romance usually riddled with inaccuracies?"

Thoughtful questions. Of course he would ask thoughtful questions. "It depends," she says, trying to keep her voice level. "You have some authors who are sticklers for accuracy, and some who couldn't give two figs about it. Readers come in both flavors, too, and a lot of history is pretty gross, so there's always a balance you have to strike between  _accuracy_  and  _accuracy that sells_."

"So…" he ponders her words for a long moment. "That means that all your heroes have all their teeth, even if the book is set in 1818?"

He's so non-judgmental and so damn  _smart_ ; she could kiss him all night. "All their teeth, hair, fortunes, titles, and always, always, always a mighty, pulsating wang."

He nearly spits his chocolate out and dissolves into a coughing fit.

She pulls on a mock-serious face, emboldened. "It's only fair, you know. After all, the heroines all have sparkly magical hoo-haas that cure everything from nymphomania to alcoholism to PTSD."

"You're  _joking_."

She giggles. "Okay, I'm being a  _little_  facetious. What most people don't realize is that romance is a huge-ass genre, and like any genre, the signal-to-noise ratio is pretty low. So you have a lot of crap, you have a smaller number of mediocre works, and very few truly excellent ones."

"But I'm assuming  _someone_  reads the crap, given the volume of it that's published?"

"It's highly subjective material, more so than almost anything else that's published, because romance has to grab you by the short and curlies, so to speak." She thumps a fist on her heart. "It all depends on personal taste. So  _I_  can think that Miranda Neville writes absolute garbage, but there are legions of fans out there who swear by her."

"Huh. I'm afraid I've never heard of her. Why do you think she writes garbage?"

Kaoru settles in more firmly in her pile of blankets, feeling the warmth of a good discussion bubble up her insides, even if the apartment seems to be getting colder by the minute. "Well, there's really nothing truly  _objectionable_  about her. All her heroines are bookish, her heroes properly tortured and chiseled within inches of their lives, blah, blah, blah. It's just that her prose seems so flat and lifeless and littered with modernisms. I can't give you anything more intellectual than that—you can analyze a romance for theme and symbolism and whatnot, certainly, but it's gotta worm its way into your arteries first."

He purses his lips, considering. "I see. Where do you fall, then, on the historical accuracy divide?"

"Some people may not care that you have the duke ride up to Almack's in his Porsche, but I do." She narrows her eyes and takes a grateful sip. "I care."

He smiles. "I wonder how hard it must be to strike that balance? These are obviously modern authors writing stories set in bygone times with modern sensibilities."

"It must be a terrible headache. But do you know, it's a huge part of why I love romance so much—I mean, aside from the fact that it's a genre that deals with women's sexuality, with our wants, and our needs. It doesn't do it very well all the time, of course. I mean, you only need to read a Bertrice Small novel to see  _that_." She shudders half for show, and half for real. "But I love how romance narratives are deeply, deeply personal."

"I figured that much."

She makes an impatient noise. "No. Like, for example, if a person privileged enough to have literacy in his purview in 1818 happened to have severe dyslexia, he wouldn't be able to find a support group at White's and talk it over with his buddies; he is likely going to be deeply ashamed and probably depressed and try very, very hard to hide it. You don't often see narratives like that coming out of anyplace but romancelandia."

He cocks his head to one side, pinning her in place with eyes that would not be out of place in an old school novel, complete with Fabio and a woman with big hair and even bigger breasts on the cover. "I might have to ask you to pass a few good romances along to me, then."

Her heart leaps.  _The Shadow and the Star_ , for sure, and  _A Lady Awakened_ , and that Turner series—

That's when the radiator in the corner of the room, which had been puffing away quite handily, gives a series of bangs, a couple of angry hisses, and finally falls sullenly silent.

* * *

This time, Kenshin is the one shooting angry glares at his phone. "I'm so sorry about this, Miss Kaoru."

"Drop the miss, please."

"I will once you agree to sleep in my room, where, I remind you, there's  _heat_."

"Absolutely not. It was my dang fool decisions that landed me in this mess and in your apartment. I can't put you out of your bed, too."

He runs an impatient hand through his hair, debating whether calling his super again would be worth it. Probably not; Yuzaemon is usually away on business and Raijuta is possibly the most useless maintenance man Kenshin has ever met. "Please stop being difficult."

Her eyebrows lower over thunderously blue eyes. "No,  _you_  stop being difficult. I'll be fine out here. Just give me an extra blanket." She looks about three times her size, bundled up in a scarf he had knitted sometime last year, extra socks, and two more sweatshirts he'd given her. It's ridiculous and absurdly charming.

"It's  _thirty below_  out there. There isn't a blanket meaty enough for the job."

The solution, of course, is glaring them in the face: his bed is plenty big enough. Kenshin bites the inside of his cheek. He could suggest it, of course—all in the name of conservation of heat!—but he's been the one eyeing her mouth and the side of her neck all night, so he won't.  _Conflict of interest, my friend_.

She twists her fingers together. "Okay. Okay, how about this." She jams a thumb toward his bedroom. "I saw your bed. Big enough for both of us."

 _Not really._  The idea of her in his bed is much more exciting than it should be—or, rather, it's  _exactly_  as exciting as it should be, which is monumentally idiotic, considering the circumstances. "If you're sure…"

"I'm sure," she declares. She bends to gather the pile of blankets from her end of the couch, and marches to his room. "Come on. We've got to wait out snowpocalypse somehow. Might as well be warm."

He follows in her wake, feeling slightly slimy but so pathetically euphoric, it doesn't seem to matter.

Nightly rituals are kept short by a lack of hot water. He lends her a brush. She flicks her contacts into the garbage. He offers her baby lotion—something he keeps bottles and bottles of around because he loves how it smells—and she accepts with a wondering little smile. They close the door, turn the radiator knob as far to the right as it will go, and settle into bed, stiff as boards.

He's acutely aware of her breath, soft and low and even. Of the dark fall of her hair over her pillow. Of the rustle of sheets as she moves.

An hour ticks by.

* * *

Kaoru is losing her mind. Nothing, no temptation she'd ever faced in her twenty-four years, is proving more alluring than giving in to the slight dip in the mattress. She could roll back, following gravity, and leech his warmth, bask in his rich, sandalwood-on-ginger scent. It wouldn't even be that hard. It would be, in fact, the easiest, most natural thing she'd ever done.

Which would, of course, send him running to the living room in a fit of gentlemanly nerves.

She grits her teeth. How did other women do this? How did they manage to sidle into others' lives so easily, so without awkwardness, and make their feelings known?  _How the hell did Megumi do it?_

Kenshin moves. Her every nerve ending stands on its head, electrified. Over the frantic tattoo of her heart, she hears his breath, too deep for sleep.

 _This is ridiculous_ , she tells herself sternly.  _He might be a deeply thoughtful, frighteningly intelligent, stunningly handsome man, but you are being ridiculous, even for_ you.

She sits upright. "That's  _it_."

"What is?" He sits upright as well. "Are you all right?"

"No," she says, trying not to pout. "We're both being really dumb about this."

"I agree." He moves to get out of bed. "I'll make up a bed on the couch—"

"Don't you move," she snaps at him in a voice she usually reserves for intractable twelve-year-olds and Sano.

He dutifully freezes, blinking.

She wedges a pillow between their bodies. "This," she says, patting it, "is Switzerland."

He blinks. "Right."

"Neutral territory," she elaborates. "Nobody invades Switzerland."

His mouth twitches. "Would this be a bad time to mention Napoleon and the Helvetic Republic?"

"Yes," she says, snorting. "No bringing elephants over the Alps."

"I think Hannibal was responsible for that one."

" _Kenshin_." She glares.

He pats the pillow, smiling. "All right. I'll keep any and all pachyderms on my side of the fence. Good night, Kaoru."

"Thank you." A completely inappropriate thrill runs through her. "You dropped the miss," she says as they lay back down.

"I did tell you I would."

He had, hadn't he? "What, once I climb in your bed, you stop respecting me?" she teases, emboldened by Switzerland between them.

He snorts. "Good night,  _Miss_  Kaoru."

She giggles, and finally settles down to sleep.


	6. Chapter 6

Kaoru wakes with a profound sense of disorientation: that wall is not her wall, those curtains are too tasteful to be hers, and she hasn't owned sheets that have such a high thread-count in her entire life, or ones that are such a rich shade of plum. She peers around with eyes heavy with sleep, and languidly wonders at her complete lack of panic. It's too dark to panic, and too warm. The light struggling past the curtains is a meager grey. The wind howls somewhere outside, almost low enough to ignore over the hissing of the radiator and the slow, soft breath against the back of her neck.

The night comes back to her then, in a rush that has her blinking owlishly at the wall in surprise. Along with that, the fact that it was  _Kenshin_  with his arm thrown over her waist, his legs tangled with hers, and his breath slow and steady and deep on her neck. She goes instantly rigid; her heart beats a rapid tattoo in her chest; every single nerve ending crackles with electricity.

So. It seems Switzerland wasn't quite the bastion of neutrality she had been hoping for.

She swallows. She should move. Gently so she wouldn't wake him. Wrap herself up in blankets, maybe make coffee. She remembers the post-it note stuck to his refrigerator with the number for the building superintendent scribbled on it; if the heat hadn't been turned on, she could maybe bully the handyman into coming up and tinkering with the radiator in the living room. She should, if she considered herself a woman of character, leave this bed and do some small, useful things to help the man who had been so generous with his time and his chocolate.

She lays a tentative hand on the arm thrown about her abdomen. Kenshin is a slim man, but he's not scrawny. She had known that. He had told her that he did kendo and some kickboxing on the side. But her breath comes faster as she feels evidence of his ropy muscles under her hand, so solid and real. She doesn't dare to move, to breathe more loudly, because she can acutely feel the swell of his pectorals against the panes of her back.

_Move. I should move_.

She eases one leg out of their cocoon of blankets, but before she can get far, Kenshin makes an indistinct grunt of protest, tightens his arm, and buries his face in the crook of her neck.

She reacts like a scalded cat—his nose is  _cold_ —and holds her breath.  _Count to ten_. By beats she relaxes.

_Okay_ , she thinks.  _Okay, I can handle this_. She considers the topography of her situation while desperately trying not to think of the topography of Kenshin's body, so warm and comforting and overwhelmingly male behind her. She tries to ease out again when she thinks,  _Do I want to?_

She doesn't. At all. She wants to stay and bask in his warmth and fantasize about his kisses and touches and the imprint of his lips on her shoulder. It would not be hard. She could pretend she'd never woken and burrow in the blankets.

But there's something terrible and exploitative in that line of thinking. Kenshin had not given her explicit consent to touch his body. Unthinking movements during sleep didn't count. To continue to touch him, once she'd become cognizant of the situation, would be unconscionable.

So she eases out again, this time ignoring his sleepy protests, and tiptoes to the bathroom. As quietly as she can, she brushes her teeth, helps herself to a dollop of an ancient tube of Neutrogena face wash, and then tiptoes out the door.

* * *

Kenshin wakes up knowing exactly where is his, what transpired the previous night, and with whom he'd shared a bed. She sits up, rubbing his eyes with a thumb and forefinger. A subtle hint of jasmine clings to his sheets and he can hear Kaoru arguing with someone, can smell the full-bodied hint of coffee in the air. He smiles. He could get used to that.

He makes his way out of bed, into the bathroom, and finally out into his frigid living room. Kaoru is wrapped up in a blanket that's trailing around her ankles, a phone glued to her ear and her mouth set as she listened to whoever was on the other end. He ducks back into his room and fishes out a thick pair of socks for her, and emerges again in time to hear her say, "Yeah, well, listen up, bucko. I know for a fact that not having peepholes on apartment doors is  _against the law_  in Chicago, so  _one_  call to the right authorities would have you guys paying through your collective noses—" A pause. "Yes, I  _am_  threatening you, you numbskull." He winces. Never good to admit that out loud. "Did you not hear me? We have been without heat in the better part of this apartment for over thirteen hours now!  _Thirteen hours! With a blizzard outside!_  What part of, 'Get your ass up here and fix the damn radiator,' do you not understand? You know what? Get me your supervisor. Yes. Yes. I'll hold."

He shakes his head, enjoying the sight of her valiantly fighting his battles with obstructive handy-men. He'd often wondered why it was that people like Hiko never got put on hold and got through to supervisors in one call. It was as though corporate bureaucrats could smell accommodating personalities through the phone lines. (A particular incident from his youth involving cable TV comes to mind: Kenshin had spent a total of five hours spread out over three days getting passed from salesperson from incompetent salesperson, while Hiko had gotten the matter resolved in under thirty minutes, just in time to catch the Cricket World Cup.) He'd eventually put it down to the fact that, unlike Kenshin, Hiko walked into any given situation expecting to be treated like a king and not, say, like the pompous fathead he generally pretended to be. The bitch of it was, though, that Hiko often snapped his fingers and reality leapt to do his bidding.

_Except in my case, but I don't we're ever going to make peace on that front_.

"I do appreciate it," he says out loud, "but I don't think that's going to do you any good."

Her head snaps around. He watches the changes on her face—the slight reddening of cheek, the flutter of lashes, the sharp intake of breath—and he's equal parts charmed and alarmed. He comes off the doorjamb. "Are you all right?"

"Fine," she says quickly. "Fine. You scared me, is all. You move like a cat."

He's not convinced, but lets it go for now. "Force of habit." He tosses her the socks. "It'll be cold in here for a while yet. You should put those on."

"Thanks." She carefully sets the phone down and tugs on the socks.

"I meant what I said earlier." He walks into the kitchen and begins rummaging in his pantry. "Raijuta's not going to show up here before tomorrow."

She trails after him, a frown on her face and his phone stuck to her ear. "Not if I have anything to do with it."

"I'll leave you to it, then. Meanwhile, do you want eggs or pancakes?"

"Depends," she says. "What sort of eggs?"

"I had scrambled with pepper jack cheese, pepper, mushrooms, and spinach in mind." He raises his eyebrows at her in inquiry. "Or, we could do buttermilk pecan pancakes with—" he leans in to the fridge "—blueberry or hazelnut syrup. Side of turkey sausage and freshly squeezed orange juice. Your call."

Her eyes are round and her mouth slack. "Can you really—?" Then she shakes her head. "No, what am I talking about, of course you can."

"What'll it be?"

She looks slightly overwhelmed. "You understand you don't have to feed me, right? I'll be good with cold cereal or microwave oatmeal."

"And you understand that I  _want_  to feed you, right?" His heart thuds slowly in his chest. He can smell her everywhere, subtly, alluringly feminine. He wants to sift through her clever, nimble mind. He wants to spend thousands of evenings debating politics and media and the best Eddie Murphy movies with her, and cook her a thousand meals. One day, he vows, he'll take her to Istanbul and kiss her right in the middle of the Spice Bazaar.

"Oh,  _all right_. You've worn me down with verbal food porn. I'd like pancakes please."

He grins, and then directs her toward the juicer and a pile of oranges because she likes feeling helpful and he already is plotting out a million ways to make her happy. "Attend."

* * *

Kaoru listens as Kenshin whips homemade pancake batter with machine-like precision in between pressing down on orange halves on the juicer. The kitchen is filled with delicious early morning smells: melting butter, sizzling sausage, and sweet pancakes rising on his skillet.

"I stand in awe," she says as he flips three perfectly round, perfectly thick pancakes into a beautiful china plate.

"I'll teach you," he says easily, busy setting the table.

"I wouldn't count on it. I'd probably burn your building down."

"I refuse to believe that you're quite as bad as you claim. After all, you managed to get Raijuta up here within the hour."

She grins. "Eh. Persistence and skill aren't exactly the same things."

"It often all comes to the same, though. How about this: you teach me how to bully city employees, and I'll give you my pancake recipe."

"Not a chance." She takes a bite. They're buttery and soft and fluffy, studded with pecans and drizzled liberally with fresh blueberry syrup. "Oh god," she groans.

"Good?"

"The best. If it's possible to orgasm from food, I think I just did." Her mouth is running away from her, but she can't exactly bring herself to care at the moment that across from her is sitting a man with whom she had pictured orgasms in great and varying detail. That was, after all, what had driven her to call up Raijuta—she needed something to distract her from the cold and how absurdly bereft she had felt after leaving Kenshin's bed.

Kenshin's smile is slow. She swallows hard, awareness prickling over her skin. She had felt off-center from the moment she'd turned to find him leaning against his bedroom door, so beautiful with his eyes still heavy-lidded from sleep and his mouth curled into a grin.

"Not that—that I'm asking for, uh, orgasms…because that would be…weird…." She trails off, utterly mortified.

It might be the light, but his eyes spark gold at the edges. "Why did you leave the bed first, Kaoru?"

"Because you crossed Switzerland!"

"I'm sorry." He shrugs. "If it's any consolation, I don't remember it."

She lets her forehead hit the table with a resounding  _thunk_. "Don't be." That would be unfair, because she'd enjoyed the hell out of it. "I was the one out of line there."

"Kaoru?" His voice is soft.

"Hmm?" she asks the table. She can hear him moving around the table. He kneels right beside her chair and touches her shoulder. To her disgust, it takes her a few seconds to muster up the gumption to look him in the eyes, but look him in the eyes she does.

It's definitely not the light—his irises are slowly shading to gold.

"Your eyes," she croaks. "They're—they're golden."

"Are they?" he asks. "I'm not surprised."

"Is that normal?" she asks. She peers closely, fascinated and a little concerned. "Have you gotten that checked out? I mean, I'm no doctor, and it's really pretty, but are  _sure_ —?"

He puts his head down and laughs again. He resurfaces. "Yes. I'm sure. It's hereditary, in fact, and as far as a spate of ophthalmologists could tell, perfectly harmless." He touches her wrist and sets his thumb against the fluttery pulse there. She gasps.

"I think," he says slowly, "this is the right time to start hitting on you."

"I'm not—"

"A stripper. I know."

"That's not  _remotely_  what I meant."

"What did you mean?"

She flounders, distracted by his nearness and the molten slivers in his eyes, and how his hand was wandering up her arm. "I—I was wondering where you were going with this."

His thumb rubs a wide arc over the sensitive skin of her forearm. Might as well get it out now while she still has her wits about her. "I love pop music."

"I can live with that."

"No, you don't understand. Like, I know pop music caters to the lowest common denominator, and that it resoundingly sucks, but I love it."

"I  _can_  live with that, you know."

"Like, I can blather on about Vivaldi and Beethoven and Bach until I turn blue, but I swear to you," she says, eyes wide, "if Sexy Bitch comes on, you can bet your ass that that's what I'll be listening to. I can't even get offended because it's so ridiculous."

"At the risk of repeating myself: I'm fine with that."

"I can't cook."

"I know."

She makes an exasperated noise. "I don't do laundry. I mean, I  _do_ , but sorting it and folding it is beyond me."

He kisses the inside of her wrist. She jumps. "Luckily for you, I've managed to make doing laundry an art form."

"Argh!" She shoots out of her chair and begins pacing. "I don't know what to do with you!"

He rises to his feet as well, graceful as a sunset. No awkward clambering for him. Of course she would be turned on by how the man stands up. "I think the reasonable option would be to say yes."

"You don't understand! It's like the universe dropped the perfect man on my doorstep and expects me to think that it's perfectly all right to latch on to him! There's a catch somewhere, I know it."

He scoffs at her. "You think I'm perfect? I'm flattered, but that could not be further from the truth."

"You don't mind cooking," she says, counting out his transgressions on her fingers. "You don't mind doing laundry. You're gorgeous. You're intensely intelligent and eloquent.  _You're a redhead who looks good in pink._  Tell me what's not to like?"

He snorts. "This is probably counter-intuitive, but—I can't stay out of other people's business. It takes a lot to make me mad, but when I'm mad, I can get vicious. I can be really annoyingly righteous. And I don't often take no for an answer."

"Ugh!" She throws her hands up in the air. "The fact that you're so self-aware makes you even more attractive!"

He frowns. "I'm confused. Take pity on a poor man, Kaoru, and explain this to me. You don't seem to have any objections to me, right?"

"No…"

"Then what's the problem?"

She buries her face in her hands. "It's because," she says in a small voice, finally giving life to the utterly terrifying truth of it, "I could fall in love with you."

Silence stretches out. She chances a look through her fingers.

His face is frozen, his features a study in surprise. As slowly as the sunrise and as beautifully, he smiles. "Well," he says, clearing his throat. "Well, that's good."

Her hands fall away. "It is?"

"Very good." He crosses the room in three bounding steps and slips his hands around his waist more naturally than breathing. "Very good." He kisses her forehead. "Because, you see," now her right cheek, "I began falling in love," now her left, "the moment you threatened me with that shoe." And finally, finally he kisses her mouth.

It's not a demanding kiss. It's not even  _much_  of a kiss, just a rubbing of lips and a sharing of breath.

"Is that it?" she asks. "It was lovely, don't get me wrong, but—"

He laughs. "No," he says, and finally kisses her the right way, tongue and all. She relaxes into it the same time she is enflamed by it. They break away, panting. "How's that for you?"

"Better." She leans into his chest. "I've never made out on the first date before."

"First time for everything," he says, his eyes a dizzying swirl of purple so dark it's blue and bright, bright gold, and kisses her again.

* * *

Once, while Kenshin was somewhere in the wilds of Maharashtra, he had the honor of indulging in  _bhang ki thandai_ , a sweet beverage liberally spiked with marijuana, during a  _Holi_  festival. He remembers the colors of that night, so bright they were blinding, spinning, spinning around him. Kissing Kaoru feels even better than that. Her lips are sweeter than any wine, and more potent than any  _bhang_.

"You should know," he says when they finally break apart, panting, "that I'm in this for the long haul." He rests his forehead on hers.

"What?" she asks, a little dazed. He's ridiculously pleased. "Long what?"

He grins, but quickly schools his expression to sobriety. He must make a few things clear. "You are no one night stand. If we do start dating, I'm looking for a long-term relationship. I am older than you, and I can understand if you want to keep your options open for now, but I want you to know that—"

This time, she kisses him. It's a delicious kiss because it tastes like joy. "Me, too," she says. "I told you. I'm falling in love."

His heart almost explodes. He wraps his arms around her, and kisses her throat, the soft column of it, over and over. "Actually, your exact words were, 'I  _could_  fall in love with you.'"

She punches him in the arm, but not hard. "I think I started last night at dinner. Not very often a man feeds me such wonderful food."

"The men of this world have obviously been remiss. I'll correct that oversight, don't worry."

"Seriously, though," she says, "I feel like I'm getting the better end of this deal. I get the perfect man— _shut up_ , Kenshin—while you get a hot mess."

"You're hot," he says, mock-seriously, leading her over to the couch. She settles down beside him and snuggles like he's been wanting her to for the better part of the last twenty-four hours. He puts an arm around her and pulls her even closer. "Maybe even a mess at the moment. Not a hot mess, though."

"Very flattering." She kisses his nose. "But hardly an answer to my question. What are you getting out of this relationship?"

He looks at her, long and hard. "Kaoru—I don't know how to say this, but the last day has been enough for me to consider you amazing. Please tell me you know that."

She rolls her eyes. "Of course I know that. Oh, God, I sound like such a ninny. But, seriously, I'm just wondering—what made me so special in your eyes that you propose a long term relationship in less than a day?"

He doesn't even stop to consider her question. "You make me laugh."

"It's not hard to make you laugh."

"I've laughed more in the last day than I have in the last ten years put together." It's as though she's gone rummaging inside his soul and thrown wide the drapes and opened vast expanses of it to the sky. The words are small and rusty from being kept in the cramped recesses of his mind. Perhaps it is time to air out all of his words, and let her be the judge. He catches her hand in his. Holds on tight. "Kaoru…"

"Kenshin?"

"In good faith, maybe I ought to tell you everything."

She blinks wide, blue eyes at him. "Everything?"

"A…a biography of sorts. You call me perfect, but you should know how—"  _Profoundly damaged I am_. "—about certain events that have had a pretty big impact on me."

"Lay it on me," she says, squaring her chin. She taps his chest. "I can take whatever you dish out because you are worth it."

Something deep inside him unclenches. "This father I keep telling you about," he begins, "Well, he's not really my father. He did adopt me when I was eight, but…my parents, my birth parents, I don't have very many memories of them." He remembers even less than his words intimate: a blue room and voice telling him to hush. He can't even tell if the voice had been a loving one. "Anyway, I was passed from foster home to foster home. In the last home I was in, I made some friends, these girls who looked after me the best they could. Eventually, though, as many children in that situation do, I fell in with the wrong crowd. Little things, in the beginning: shoplifting, pick-pocketing, running little extortion schemes with other kids." He falls silent, trying to parse into words what happened next the way he remembers. "One night there was a fire. They died. They all died. I remember the smoke, and Kasumi carrying me out. I was seven."

She leans her head against his shoulder, and holds his hand.

"I sat there for three days among the rubble. Social Services lost track of me. They thought I'd died—and what was one small body among all the others?" He clears his throat. "I survived. My old gang helped a little, though most of them wanted nothing to do with me. One of them showed me how to lift tires, how to sell them to chop shops for a little money." Shinsaku, bless his heart, had explained how he didn't need to seek validation for crimes he'd committed as a child, but Kenshin had never been able to stop. "You need to understand. I was so hungry all the time. I knew that there were other things I could do, that other kids did, but I was too scared. I knew it was bad, that kids who went away with old men didn't always come back, or if they did, they came back funny. So it was petty thievery for me.

"The nights were just starting to get cold, but I didn't dare go to a shelter. Bad things happened to kids at shelters. Better to take the streets and trust your luck. One night, there was a white Cadillac parked behind a seedy dive down the street from where I was camping. Big, beautiful thing. Gleaming fenders. A car like that stands out when you live your life in filth. So, what do I do? I decide to lift the tires off that baby.

"Turns out, though, that the car belonged to one Seijuro Hiko. He was in town tracking down a bar where the owner supposedly brewed his own beer, and he caught me in the act." He turns to half-smile at her, still puzzled at the wonder of it. "I was terrified that he'd turn me over to the police. He didn't. He took me home instead."

"Maybe he's not such an asshat, after all," she says softly.

Kenshin snorts. "Oh, he is. He is. Don't be fooled, he's an asshat through and through. But he's not a terrible person. He…you see, after he plucked me off the streets, I wasn't…doing well. The normal symptoms of PTSD. I'd wet the bed, have nightmares and flashbacks, burst into tears for no reason, and had little to no idea how to interact with people in meaningful ways. I had a lot of trouble believing that Hiko wouldn't throw me out on my ass if he got tired of me."

"But he didn't."

"No, he didn't. He saved my life over and over again. He taught me kendo in his own familial style. He hired tutors to make up for all the school I missed."  _As though that is the end of it._  A million memories come to mind: cool nights watching fireflies from the porch, hot apple cider on cold fall mornings, and a new bicycle for him every year as long as he wanted it. Still, one image of Hiko stands out among the rest—the way Hiko had stayed up to read to him when the nightmares came—incomprehensible books, to be sure,  _War and Peace, A Tale of Two Cities, The Shah-Namah, The Art of War_ —but Hiko had been there, his huge bulk ensconced comfortably in the armchair next to Kenshin's bed, his voice rumbling beautiful words late into the night. "Of course, once I'd gotten over the fact that he had indeed somehow found me in the system and then bullied the system into letting him adopt me, I began acting out. All of the usual ways, of course, to test his affection." He smiles a little to himself. "I don't know where I got the gall. He's still about three times my size." Maybe because he'd been sure that Hiko would never really hit him. Knocks on the head didn't count. That was kendo.

"Anyway, fast forward to my last year in college. I'd taken the bar exam. Hiko, of course, didn't want me going to law school." Hiko had wanted him to go into the family business, such as it is, but Kenshin had decided very early on that the warrior-slash-hermit-slash-artist lifestyle was not for him—he was not nearly misanthropic enough. "I'd worked my way through undergrad and paid the rest of the way with scholarships, so he didn't really have much of a say in the matter. He  _still_  calls me a bloodsucker, you know. Anyway, I'd moved off campus, and I was living in a run-down part of town, it was all I could afford at the time. I was juggling three different internships and taught kendo at the local YMCA, so I was sleeping about three hours a night. And…

"And one night, I heard my neighbors getting loud. My neighbors, they were an old man who would go on long business trips, a daughter my age, and a little boy, all of them poor. I'd gotten to know the daughter at that point—sometimes we'd trade recipes, I'd carry her laundry and groceries up, that kind of thing." He swallows. "Her name was Tomoe."

* * *

_This is significant_ , a voice in Kaoru's head whispers.  _Tomoe, Tomoe_.

Her heart had broken over and over for all that he'd borne and for how he still tried to normalize his life, as though neglect and deprivation and tragedy didn't leave devastatingly unique and utterly lasting scars, ones that wouldn't be as obvious as the one on his face but just as livid. But she'd sat and listened and held his hand and didn't flinch.

"Tomoe, it would not be unfair to say, was probably the first woman I ever fell in love with."

Kenshin's voice is a quiet, gentle rumble beneath her ear, but that doesn't stop the words from punching her in the gut.  _This is not about you_ , she tells herself.  _This is not about you. Listen_.

"It would also not be unfair to say that I wanted to marry her. I never had any concrete plans—it was more of nebulous wishful thinking on my part. I'd go to law school, she'd go back to college, and we'd settle comfortably somewhere and raise her little brother, Enishi, and when the time was right, we'd have our own kids. I never really told her any of this, mind you; I just asked her out. We were both dirt poor, so we went out to matinee showings of old movies a lot. I remember seeing  _Lord of the Rings: the Two Towers_  and the second Harry Potter movie at the crack of noon." She feels him smile. "For a time…we were happy, or as happy as people living slightly below the poverty line could get."

"Then…"

Every one of his words should hurt her like pins, but her heart cracks only for him, a splinter at a time.

"Then," he continues, "her ex-boyfriend came to visit. His name was Akira Kiyosato. He and Tomoe had known each other since grade school, and even dated for a time, but he'd gotten involved in gangs and drug-peddling and she'd kicked him out of her life after she found out. She was handy that way, Tomoe. So he came back, having finally run afoul the gang leadership. They used him, apparently, to sell to rich suburban kids. I could see it; even run-down and filthy and desperate, he looked wholesome." He paused. "I hated his guts."

"Did he…was he abusive?"

"No. No. He was polite and apologetic and swore he'd get out in a matter of days, once he lined up a place to hide out for a while. I hated him because he was what I—what I would have become, had Hiko not rescued me." He shakes his head. "Anyway. A few nights later, I hear glass breaking, people yelling. I run over to Tomoe's. There were these two guys, dressed all in black and in chains. They had baseball bats, and they were yelling at Akira, at Tomoe, smashing the place up and having the time of their lives." His voice tightens in anger, even as he doesn't stop stroking her arm with one hand and hanging on to her own with the other.

"It was the smashing the TV that really got to me. The Yukishiro family didn't have much, but whatever they had, Tomoe kept polished to a high sheen. You could have eaten off her floors. I grabbed my sword, hacked and sliced and diced, sent the goons home with broken bones. 'No big deal,' I thought. 'Scared them away. Everything is fine.'"

An icy mass settles in Kaoru's stomach.

"They came back the next day. They brought guns." His words come slowly and as though from a great distance. "I was at their apartment, trying to coax her little brother out from under the table. She was cooking, Akira was smoking by the window. He was an ass. He  _knew_  she didn't like the smell, but he still…" He clears his throat. "They came without warning. They kicked down the door. I remember the sound. Like thunder inside your head. I pushed Enishi under the table, got under with him. I remember watching the bullets jerk Akira around, one, two, three. Then Tomoe came running."

There is silence, leaving her to wonder in mute horror and sympathy. After a minute, he says softly, "They shot her, too. Just once, but that was enough. I don't remember much after that. I must have run towards her because I got shot twice, once in the shoulder and again in my left arm. I…held her as she died." He rubs a hand over his scarred cheek. "I got these that day when they shot out the window above my head."

_Oh, God_. Kaoru holds herself still. In the quiet of his apartment, every word feels like the deepest confidence.

"After that, it's all a blur. Paramedics came. They sent me home to Hiko. I stayed for a while. Worked my fingers down to the bone with my sword once I was able, hours at a time. He made inquires after Enishi and Mr. Yukishiro for me—he'd survived, and both of them had disappeared into the ether, it seemed like. I stayed long enough to hear that. Then I just…left."

"Was Hiko…didn't he have anything to say about that?"

Kenshin snorts. "Oh, he had  _plenty_  to say. 'Be as the bamboo leaf bent by the dew.' Old aphorisms delivered with such snide superiority that you wanted to knock his teeth out. But he didn't stop me. He didn't give me any money, of course. He doesn't believe in that kind of thing…but, he did tell me not to die. That I had to come back and then we'd share a drink as men. 'If you ever muddle your way to manhood,' were his exact terms, but you get the gist." He takes a deep breath. "So, there you have it. My sordid history and the events that precipitated my induction into the ranks of globetrotting maniacs."

Kaoru is beginning to see how Hiko had saved Kenshin yet again—he'd saved Kenshin from self-pity. Whenever Kenshin's narrative had gotten too maudlin, there had been a mention of Hiko, dispensing wisdom and condescension in equal measure.  _I ought to send him a fruit basket_.

"So," Kenshin continues, "you can imagine my frustration when, after a number of years of trying not to involve myself with anyone, I come across this tableau: Sano and his fists against a dozen-odd Yakuza. He was, of course, doing something bone-headedly noble—defending a poor family from them, I believe." He sighed. "So I did what I did best—I pulled out my sword and helped Sano the best I could."

"I remember this story," Kaoru says, sitting up a little bit. "Sano says you ran like hell afterwards."

"I did. I hadn't the cleanest track record when it came to defending the helpless with brute force."

"But he hunted you down."

"That he did. He wouldn't give up—a tendency, I'm sure, you're familiar with. Anyway, in the end, he scribbled his address down on a scrap of napkin and told me to look him up if I ever happened to be in Chicago. And six months later, that's what I did."

"What made you decide to come back?"

"Truly, you want to know?"

"I do."

"I  _finally_  figured out what it means to be a bamboo leaf bent by the dew. It means to be aware of the forces acting around you, and how you can act in concert with them or against them to fulfill your ends. To use appropriate force to meet challenges. I realized that in the world we live in, swordsmanship could give you philosophical basis, but not the means. So I came back, went to law school, and decided that I'd help as many people as I could, but on my terms."

* * *

They are silent after that. It's a comfortable silence that permeates every inch of Kenshin's skin. He soaks in it. He catches a lock of Kaoru's hair and twists it around and around, around this finger than that one.  _Let her digest. Let her think. She will not leave_. He closes his eyes twice just to reassure himself that this is not a dream: Kaoru has heard his troubles, and is still here in his arms.

At length, she sits up, looks him in the eye, and says, "Okay, now that you've laid your heart at my feet, so to speak, lets get a few things clear, yeah?"

"All right."

"One. Every holiday, Christmas, Thanksgiving, what-have-you, we invite Hiko."

"I don't think you've thought this through," he says, even as fireworks are going off inside of him: she's making long-term plans. She's planning on being here, with him, come Thanksgiving, come Christmas, come as many years as he could make his last.

"No, I'm sure I have. We invite him."

"All right. You're going to regret this, though. He's obnoxious."

"Oh, I know," she smiles. "But you need someone to rankle you. You're too self-possessed."

"Evil," he mutters.

"Two. We go to couples' counseling. You have your issues, and I have mine, and I like you too much to have them cloud a very good thing. So: therapy."

"Aye, aye, captain."

She smiles sweetly. "Three. Let's take this slow. I know the whole stripper episode was awkward, but could we, I don't know, go out? Dinner-and-a-show? Like normal people?"

"I think that's doable."

She sends him a dry look. "I'm so glad you think so. Four. I want a cat."

"I live to please," he says, and kisses her with his heart and soul and all the hope for the future he feels thrumming through his veins.


End file.
